Samnd  ixtglor  (ftrlmirge 


BY 

H.D.TRAILL 


^c=P^^ 


(EngltsI)  Mtn  of  Ccttcrs 

EDITED  BY  JOHN  MORLEY 


COLEEIDGE 


BY 


H.  D.  TRAILL 


NEW   YORK 

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1 . 
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LIBRARY 

HKiyERsriv  oi  <;aliforma 

gL^JMXA  BAItUAJliA 


PKEFATORY  NOTE. 

In  a  tolerably  well-known  passage  in  one  of  his  essays  De 
Quincey  enumerates  the  multiform  attainments  and  powers 
of  Coleridge,  and  the  corresponding  varieties  of  demand 
made  by  them  on  any  one  who  should  aspire  to  become  this 
many-sided  man's  biographer.  The  description  is  slightly 
touched  with  the  humorous  hyperbole  characteristic  of  its 
author;  but  it  is  in  substance  just,  and  I  cannot  but  wish 
that  it  were  possible,  within  the  limits  of  a  preface,  to  set  out 
the  whole  of  it  in  excuse  for  the  many  inevitable  shortcom- 
ings of  this  volume.  Having  thus  made  an  "  exhibit "  of  it, 
there  would  only  remain  to  add  that  the  difficulties  with 
which  De  Quincey  confronts  an  intending  biographer  of 
Coleridge  must  necessarily  be  multiplied  many-fold  by  the 
conditions  under  which  this  work  is  here  attempted.  No 
complete  biography  of  Coleridge,  at  least  on  any  important 
scale  of  dimensions,  is  in  existence ;  no  critical  appreciation 
of  his  work  as  a  whole,  and  as  correlated  with  the  circum- 
stances and  affected  by  the  changes  of  his  life,  has,  so  for  as  I 
am  aware,  been  attemjited.  To  perform  either  of  these  two 
tasks  adequately,  or  even  with  any  approach  to  adequacy,  a 
writer  should  at  least  have  the  elbow-room  of  a  portly  vol- 
ume. To  attempt  the  two  together,  therefore,  and  to  attempt 
them  within  the  limits  prescribed  to  tlie  manuals  of  this 
series,  is  an  enterprise  which  I  think  should  claim,  from  all 
at  least  who  are  not  offended  by  its  audacity,  an  almost  un- 
bounded indulffcnce. 


vi  PREFATORY  NOTE. 

The  supply  of  material  for  a  Life  of  Coleridge  is  fairly 
plentiful,  though  it  is  not  very  easily  come  by.  For  the  most 
part  it  needs  to  be  hunted  up  or  fished  up — those  accustomed 
to  the  work  will  appreciate  tlie  difference  between  the  two 
processes — from  a  considerable  variety  of  contemporary  doc- 
uments. Completed  biograjjhy  of  the  poet-philosopher  there 
is  none,  as  has  been  said,  in  existence ;  and  the  one  volume 
of  the  unfinished  Life  left  us  by  Mr.  Gillman — a  name  never 
to  be  mentioned  with  disrespect,  however  diflScult  it  may 
sometimes  be  to  avoid  doing  so,  by  any  one  who  honours  the 
name  and  genius  of  Coleridge — covers,  and  that  in  but  a 
loose  and  rambling  fashion,  no  more  than  a  few  years.  Mr. 
Cottle's  Recollections  of  Southcy,  Worchwoj'th,  and  Coleridge 
contains  some  valuable  information  on  certain  points  of  im- 
portance, as  also  does  the  Letters,  Conversations,  etc.,  of  S.  T.  C. 
by  Mr.  Allsop.  Miss  Jleteyard's  Groiij)  of  Eminent  English- 
men throws  much  light  on  the  relations  between  Coleridge 
and  his  early  patrons,  the  Wedgwoods.  Everything,  wheth- 
04'  critical  or  biographical,  that  De  Quincey  wrote  on  Cole- 
ridgian  matters  requires,  with  whatever  discount,  to  be  care- 
fully studied.  The  Life  of  Wordsworth,  by  the  BishoiD  of 
St.  Andrews;  The  Correspondence  of  Southey ;  the  Rev.  Der- 
went  Coleridge's  brief  account  of  his  father's  life  and  writ- 
ings ;  and  the  prefatory  memoir  prefixed  to  the  1880  edition 
of  Coleridge's  Poetical  and  Dramatic  Works,  have  all  had  to 
be  consulted.  But,  after  all,  there  remain  several  tantalising 
gaps  in  Coleridge's  life  which  refuse  to  be  bridged  over ;  and 
one  cannot  but  think  that  there  must  be  enough  uni">ublished 
matter  in  the  possession  of  his  relatives,  and  the  rejiresenta- 
tives  of  his  friends  and  corresiJondents,  to  enable  some  at 
least,  though  doubtless  not  all,  of  these  missing  links  to  be 
supplied.  Perhaps  upon  a  fitting  occasion,  and  for  an  ade- 
quate purpose,  these  materials  would  be  forthcoming. 


CONTENTS. 


POETICAL  PERIOD. 

CHAPTER  I. 
1772-1794. 

BIRTH,  PARENTAGE,  ANB  EARLY  YEARS. — CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL. — 
JESUS  COLLEGE,  CAMBRIDGE Page   1 

CHAPTER  II. 
1794-1797. 

THE  BRISTOL  LECTURES. — MARRIAGE. — LIFE  AT  CLEVEDON. — 
THE  "WATCHMAN." — RETIRE5IENT  TO  STOWEY. — INTRODUC- 
TION TO  "WORDSWORTH 17 

CHAPTER  III. 
1797-1799. 

COLERIDGE  AND  WORDSWORTH. — PUBLICATION  OF  THE  "LYR- 
ICAL BALLADS."— THE  "ANCIENT  MARINER." — THE  FIRST 
PART  OF  "CHRISTABEL." — DECLINE  OF  COLERIDGE'S  POETIC 
IMPULSE.— FINAL  PJEVIEW  OF  HIS  POETRY 37 


viii  CONTENTS. 

CRITICAL  PERIOD. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

1799-1800. 

VISIT  TO  GERMANY. —  LIFE  AT  GOTTINGEN. —  RETURN.  —  EX- 
PLORES THE  LAKE  COUNTRY. —  LONDON. —  THE  "MORNING 
POST." — COLERIDGE    AS    A    JOURNALIST. — RETIREMENT    TO 

KESWICK Page  67 

CHAPTER  V. 

1800-1804. 

LIFE  AT  KESWICK. — SECOND  PART  OP  "  CHRISTABEL." — FAIL- 
ING HEALTH.  —  RESORT  TO  OPIUM.  —  THE  "  ODE  TO  DEJEC- 
TION."— INCREASING  RESTLESSNESS.— VISIT  TO  MALTA    .      84 

CHAPTER  VI. 

1806-1809. 

STAY  AT  MALTA. — ITS  INJURIOUS  EFFECTS. — RETURN  TO  ENG- 
LAND.—  MEETING  WITH  DE  QUINCEY. —  RESIDENCE  IN  LON- 
DON.—  FIRST  SERIES  OF  LECTURES 101 

CHAPTER  VII. 

1809-1810. 

RETURN  TO  THE  LAKES. — FROM  KESWICK  TO  GRASMERE.— WITH 
WORDSWORTH  AT  ALLAN  BANK. — THE  "FRIEND." — QUITS 
THE  LAKE  COUNTRY  FOREVER 117 


CONTENTS.  ix 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
1810-1816. 

LONDON  AGAIN. —  SECOND  RECOURSE  TO  JOURNALISM. —  THE 
"courier"  articles. —  THE  SHAKESPEARE  LECTURES. — 
PRODUCTION  OF  "REMORSE."  —  AT  BRISTOL  AGAIN  AS 
LECTURER.  —  RESIDENCE  AT  CALNE.  —  INCREASING  ILL 
HEALTH     AND     EMBARRASSMENTS.  —  RETIREMENT     TO     MR. 

gillman's Page  126 


METAPHYSICAL  AND   THEOLOGICAL  PERIOD. 

CHAPTER  IX. 

1816-1818. 

life  at  HIGHGATE. — RENEWED  ACTIVITY. — PUBLICATIONS  AND 
REPUBLICATIONS.  —  THE  ' '  BIOGRAPHIA  LITERARIA. "  —  THE 
LECTURES  OF  1818.  —  COLERIDGE  AS  A  SHAKESPEARIAN 
CRITIC 145 

CHAPTER  X. 

1818-1834, 

CLOSING  YEARS.  — TEMPORARY  RENEWAL  OP  MONKEY  TROU- 
BLES.— THE  "AIDS  TO  REFLECTION." — GROWING  WEAKNESS. 
— VISIT  TO  GERMANY  WITH  THE  WORDSWORTHS. — LAST  ILL- 
NESS AND  DEATH 160 

CHAPTER  XI. 

Coleridge's  metaphysics  and  theology. — the  "spiritual 

philosophy"   of   MR.  GREEN      ...,,....      173 

1* 


X  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XII. 
Coleridge's  position  in  his  later  years.— his  discourse. 

— his  influence  on  contemporary  thought. — FINAL  RE- 
VIEW OF  HIS  INTELLECTUAL  WORK Page  185 


COLERIDGE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

BIRTH,  PARENTAGE,  AND  EARLY  YEARS. — CITRIST'S  HOSPITAL. — 
JESUS  COLLEGE,  CAMBRIDGE. 

[1772-1794.] 

On  the  21st  of  October,  1772,  there  was  added  to  that  roll 
of  famous  Englishmen  of  whom  Devonshire  boasts  the  par- 
entage a  new  and  not  its  least  illustrious  name.  Samuel 
Taylor  Coleridge  was  the  son  of  the  Rev.  John  Cole- 
ridge, vicar  of  Ottery  St.  Mary  in  that  county,  and  head- 
master of  Henry  VHI.'s  Free  Grammar  School  in  the  same 
town.  He  was  the  youngest  child  of  a  large  family.  To 
the  vicar,  who  had  been  twice  married,  his  first  wife  had 
borne  three  children,  and  his  second  ten.  Of  these  latter, 
however,  one  son  died  in  infancy;  four  others,  together 
with  the  only  daughter  of  the  family,  passed  away  before 
Samuel  had  attained  his  majority ;  and  thus  only  three  of 
his  brothers,  James,  Edward,  and  George  Coleridge,  out- 
lived the  eighteenth  century.  The  first  of  these  three  sur- 
vivors became  the  father  of  Henry  Nelson  Coleridge — who 
married  his  cousin  Sara,  the  poet's  accomplished  daughter, 
and  edited  his  uncle's  posthumous  works — and  of  the  late 


2  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

Mr.  Justice  Coleridge,  himself  tlie  father  of  the  present 
Lord  Chief-Justice  of  England.  Edward,  the  second  of  the 
three,  went,  like  his  eldest  brother  William,  to  Pembroke 
College,  Oxford,  and  like  him  took  orders;  and  George, 
also  educated  at  the  same  college  and  for  the  same  pro- 
fession, succeeded  eventually  to  his  father's  benefice  and 
school.  The  vicar  himself  appears  from  all  accounts  to 
have  been  a  man  of  more  mark  than  most  rural  incumbents, 
and  probably  than  a  good  many  schoolmasters  of  his  day. 
He  was  a  Hebrew  scholar  of  some  eminence,  and  the  com- 
piler of  a  Latin  grammar,  in  which,  among  other  innova- 
tions designed  to  simplify  the  study  of  the  language  for 
"  boys  just  initiated,"  he  proposed  to  substitute  for  the 
name  of  "ablative"  that  of  "  quale-quare-quidditive  case." 
The  mixture  of  amiable  simplicity  and  not  unamiable  ped- 
antry to  which  this  stroke  of  nomenclature  testifies  was 
further  illustrated  in  his  practice  of  diversifying  his  ser- 
mons to  his  village  flock  with  Hebrew  quotations,  which 
he  always  commended  to  their  attention  as  "  the  imme- 
diate language  of  the  Holy  Ghost " — a  practice  which  ex- 
posed his  successor,  himself  a  learned  man,  to  the  com- 
plaint of  his  rustic  parishioners,  that  for  all  his  erudition 
no  "immediate  language  of  the  Holy  Ghost"  was  ever  to 
be  heard  from  him.  On  the  whole  the  Rev.  John  Cole- 
xndge  appears  to  have  been  a  gentle  and  kindly  eccentric, 
whose  combination  of  qualities  may  have  well  entitled  him 
to  be  compared,  as  his  famous  son  was  wont  in  after-life 
to  compare  him,  to  Parson  Adams. 

Of  the  poet's  mother  we  know  little ;  but  it  is  to  be 
gathered  from  such  information  as  has  come  to  us  through 
Mr.  Gillraan  from  Coleridge  himself,  that,  though  reputed 
to  have  been  a  "  woman  of  strong  mind,"  she  ^crcised 
less  influence  on  the  formation  of  her  son's  mind  and  char- 


I.]  BOYHOOD  AND  SCHOOL-DAYS.  3 

acter  than  has  frequently  been  tlio  case  with  the  not  re- 
markable mothers  of  remarkable  men.  "  She  was,"  says 
Mr.  Gillman,  "an  uneducated  woman,  industriously  atten- 
tive to  her  household  duties,  and  devoted  to  the  care  of 
her  husband  and  family.  Possessing  none  even  of  the 
most  common  accomplishments  of  her  day,  she  had  neither 
love  nor  sympathy  for  the  display  of  them  in  others.  She 
disliked,  as  she  would  say,  your  '  harpsichord  ladies,'  a:nd 
strongly  tried  to  impress  upon  her  sons  their  little  val- 
ue" (that  is,  of  the  accomplishments)  "in  their  choice 
of  wives."  And  the  final  judgment  upon  her  is  that  she 
was  "  a  very  good  woman,  though,  like  Martha,  over  care- 
ful in  many  things ;  very  ambitious  for  the  advancement 
of  her  sons  in  life,  but  wanting,  perhaps,  that  flow  of  heart 
which  her  husband  possessed  so  largely."  Of  Coleridge's 
boyhood  and  school  -  days  we  are  fortunate  in  being  able 
to  construct  an  unusually  clear  and  complete  idea.  Both 
from  his  own  autobiographic  notes,  from  the  traditionary 
testimony  of  his  family,  and  from  the  no  less  valuable 
evidence  of  his  most  distinguished  schoolfellow,  we  know 
that  his  youthful  character  and  habits  assign  him  very  con- 
spicuously to  that  perhaps  somewhat  small  class  of  eminent 
men  whose  boyhood  has  given  distinct  indications  of  great 
things  to  come.  Coleridge  is  as  pronounced  a  specimen 
of  this  class  as  Scott  is  of  its  opposite.  Scott  has  shown 
the  world  how  commonplace  a  boyhood  may  precede  a 
maturity  of  extraordinary  powers.  In  Coleridge's  case  a 
boy  of  truly  extraordinary  qualities  was  father  to  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  of  men.  As  the  youngest  of  ten 
children  (or  of  thirteen,  reckoning  the  vicar's  family  of 
three  by  his  first  wife),  Coleridge  attributes  the  early  bent 
of  his  disposition  to:eatises  the  potency  of  which  one  may 
be  permitted  to  think  that  he  has  somewhat  exaggerated. 


4  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

It  is  not  quite  easy  to  believe  that  it  was  only  through 
"certain  jealousies  of  old  Molly,"  his  brother  Frank's 
"dotingly  fond  nurse,"  and  the  infusions  of  these  jeal- 
ousies into  his  brother's  mind,  that  he  was  drawn  "  from 
life  in  motion  to  life  in  thought  and  sensation."  The 
physical  impulses  of  boyhood,  where  they  exist  in  vigour, 
are  not  so  easily  discouraged,  and  it  is  probable  that  they 
were  naturally  weaker  and  the  meditative  tendency  stronger 
than  Coleridge  in  after-life  imagined.  But  to  continue: 
"  I  never  played,"  he  proceeds,  "  except  by  myself,  and 
then  only  acting  over  what  I  had  been  reading  or  fancy- 
ing, or  half  one,  half  the  other"  (a  practice  common 
enough,  it  may  be  remarked,  among  boys  of  by  no  means 
morbidly  imaginative  habit),  "  cutting  down  weeds  and 
nettles  with  a  stick,  as  one  of  the  seven  champions  of 
Christendom.  Alas!  I  had  all  the  simplicity,  all  the  do- 
cility of  the  little  child,  but  none  of  the  child's  habits.  I 
never  thought  as  a  child  —  never  had  the  language  of  a 
child."  So  it  fared  with  him  during  the  period  of  his 
home  instruction,  the  first  eight  years  of  his  life ;  and  his 
father  having,  as  scholar  and  schoolmaster,  no  doubt  noted 
the  strange  precocity  of  his  youngest  son,  appears  to  have 
devoted  especial  attention  to  his  training.  "  In  my  ninth 
year,"  he  continues,  "  my  most  dear,  most  revered  father 
died  suddenly.  O  that  I  might  so  pass  away,  if,  like  him, 
I  were  an  Israelite  without  guile.  The  image  of  my  fa- 
ther, my  revered,  kind,  learned,  simple-hearted  father,  is 
a  religion  to  me." 

Before  he  had  attained  his  tenth  year  a  presentation 
to  Christ's  Hospital  was  obtained  for  him  by  that  eminent 
judge  Mr.  Justice  Buller,  a  former  pupil  of  his  father's ; 
and  he  was  entered  at  the  school  on  the  18th  July,  1782. 
His  early  bent  towards  poetry,  thongh  it  displayed  itself 


i]  CDRIST'S  HOSPITAL.  5 

in  youthful  verse  of  unusual  merit,  is  a  less  uncommon 
and  arresting  characteristic  than  his  precocious  speculative 
activity.  Many  a  raw  boy  "  lisps  in  numbers,  for  the  num- 
bers come ;"  but  few  discourse  Alexandrian  metaphysics 
at  the  same  age,  for  the  very  good  reason  that  the  meta- 
physics as  a  rule  do  not  "  come."  And  even  among  those 
youths  ■whom  curiosit}',  or  more  often  vanity,  induces  to 
dabble  in  such  studies,  one  would  find  few  indeed  over 
whom  they  have  cast  such  an  irresistible  spell  as  to  es- 
trange them  for  a  while  from  poetry  altogether.  That 
this  was  the  experience  of  Coleridge  we  have  his  own 
words  to  show.  His  son  and  biographer,  the  Rev.  Der- 
went  Coleridge,  has  a  little  antedated  the  poet's  stages  of 
development  in  stating  that  when  his  father  was  sent  to 
Christ's  Hospital  in  his  eleventh  year  he  was  "already  a 
poet,  and  yet  more  characteristically  a  metaphysician."  A 
poet,  yes,  and  a  precocious  scholar  perhaps  to  boot,  but  a 
metaphysician,  no ;  for  "the  delightful  sketch  of  him  by 
his  friend  and  schoolfellow  Charles  Lamb  "  was  pretty  ev- 
idently taken  not  at  "  this  period "  of  his  life  but  some 
years  later.  Coleridge's  own  account  of  the  matter  in  the 
Biographia  Literaria  '  is  clear.  "  At  a  very  premature 
age,  even  before  my  fifteenth  year,"  he  says,  "  I  had  be- 
wildered myself  in  metaphysics  and  in  theological  con- 
troversy. Nothing  else  pleased  me.  History  and  partic- 
ular facts  lost  all  interest  in  my  mind.  Poetry  (though 
for  a  schoolboy  of  that  age  I  was  above  par  in  English 
versification,  and  had  already  produced  two  or  three  com- 

*  He  tells  us  in  the  Biographia  Literaria  that  he  had  translated 
the  eight  hymns  of  Synesius  from  the  Greek  into  English  anacreon- 
tics "  before  his  fifteenth  year."  It  is  reasonable  to  suppose,  there- 
fore, that  he  had  more  scholarship  in  1V82  than  most  boys  of  ten 
years. 


6  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

positions  whicli  I  may  venture  to  say  were  somewhat  above 
mediocrity,  and  which  had  gained  me  more  credit  than  the 
sound  good  sense  of  my  old  master  was  at  all  pleased  with), 
— poetry,  itself,  yea,  novels  and  romance,  became  insipid 
to  me."  He  goes  on  to  describe  how  highly  delighted  he 
Avas  if,  during  his  friendless  wanderings  on  leave-days,  "  any 
passenger,  especially  if  he  were  dressed  in  black,"  would 
enter  with  him  into  a  conversation,  which  he  soon  found 
the  means  of  directing  to  his  favourite  subject  of  "  provi- 
dence, foreknowledge,  will,  and  fate;  fixed  fate,  free-will, 
foreknowledge  absolute."  Undoubtedly,  it  is  to  this  peri- 
od that  one  should  refer  Lamb's  well-known  description  of 
"  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  Logician,  Metaphysician,  Bard." 

"  How  have  I  seen  the  casual  passer  through  the  cloisters  stand 
still,  entranced  with  admiration  (while  he  weighed  the  disproportion 
between  the  speech  and  the  garb  of  the  young  Mirandula),  to  hear 
thee  unfold  in  thy  deep  and  sweet  intonations  the  mysteries  of  lam- 
blichus  or  Plotinus  (for  even  in  those  years  thou  waxedst  not  pale  at 
such  philosophic  draughts),  or  reciting  Homer  in  the  Greek,  or  Pin- 
dar, while  the  walls  of  the  old  Grey  Friars  re-echoed  with  the  accents 
of  the  insjnred  cJuxrity-boy." 

It  is  interesting  to  note  such  a  point  as  that  of  the 
"deep  and  sweet  intonations"  of  the  youthful  voice — 
its  most  notable  and  impressive  characteristic  in  after- 
life. Another  schoolfellow  describes  the  young  philos- 
opher as  "tall  and  striking  in  person,  with  long  black 
hair,"  and  as  commanding  "  much  deference  "  among  his 
schoolfellows.  Such  was  Coleridge  between  his  fifteenth 
and  seventeenth  year,  and  such  continued  to  be  the  state 
of  his  mind  and  the  direction  of  his  studies  until  he  was 
won  back  again  from  what  he  calls  "  a  preposterous  pur- 
suit, injurious,  to  his  natural  powers  and  to  the  progress  of 
his  education,"  by — it  is  difficult,  even  after  the  most  pains- 


I.]  CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL.  7 

taking  study  of  its  explanations,  to  record  the  phenome- 
non without  astonishment  —  a  perusal  of  the  sonnets  of 
William  Lisle  Bowles.  Deferring,  however,  for  the  pres- 
ent any  research  into  the  occult  operation  of  this  convert- 
ing agency,  it  will  be  enough  to  note  Coleridge's  own 
assurance  of  its  perfect  efficacy.  lie  was  completely  cured 
for  the  time  of  his  metaphysical  malady,  and  "  well  were 
it  for  me  perhaps,"  he  exclaims,  "  had  I  never  relapsed 
into  the  same  mental  disease;  if  I  had  continued  to  pluck 
the  flowers  and  reap  the  harvest  from  the  cultivated  sur- 
face instead  of  delving  in  the  unwholesome  quicksilver 
mines  of  metaphysic  depths."  And  he  goes  on  to  add,  in 
a  passage  full  of  the  peculiar  melancholy  beauty  of  his 
prose,  and  full  too  of  instruction  for  the  biographer,  "  But 
if,  in  after-time,  I  have  sought  a  refuge  from  bodily  pain 
and  mismanaged  sensibility  in  abstruse  researches,  which 
exercised  the  strength  and  subtlety  of  the  understanding 
without  awakening  the  feelings  of  the  heart,  there  was  a 
long  and  blessed  interval,  during  which  my  natural  facul- 
ties were  allowed  to  expand  and  my  original  tendencies 
to  develop  themselves — my  fancy,  and  the  love  of  nature, 
and  the  sense  of  beauty  in  forms  and  sounds."  This  "  long 
and  blessed  interval "  endured,  as  we  shall  see,  for  some 
eleven  or  twelve  years. 

His  own  account  of  his  seduction  from  the  paths  of 
poetry  by  the  wiles  of  philosophy  is  that  physiology  acted 
as  the  go-between.  Ills  brother  Luke  had  come  up  to 
London  to  walk  the  hospitals,  and  young  Samuel's  insatia- 
ble intellectual  curiosity  immediately  inspired  liim  with  a 
desire  to  share  his  brother's  pursuit.  "  Every  Saturday  I 
could  make  or  obtain  leave,  to  the  London  Hospital  trudged 
L  O !  the  bliss  if  I  was  permitted  to  hold  the  plasters 
or  attend  the  dressings.  ...  I  became  wild  to  be  appren- 


8  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

ticed  to  a  surgeon ;  English,  Latin,  yea,  Greek  books  of 
medicine  read  I  incessantly.  Blanchard's  Latin  Medical 
Dictionary  I  had  nearly  by  heart.  Briefly,  it  \Yas  a  wild 
dream,  which,  gradually  blending  with,  gradually  gave  way 
to,  a  rage  for  metaphysics  occasioned  by  the  essays  on 
Liberty  and  Necessity  in  Cato's  Letters^  and  more  by  the- 
ology." '  At  the  appointed  hour,  however,  Bowles  the 
emancipator  came,  as  has  been  said,  to  his  relief,  and  hav- 
ing opportunely  fallen  in  love  with  the  eldest  daughter  of 
a  widow  lady  of  whose  son  he  had  been  the  patron  and 
protector  at  school,  we  may  easily  imagine  that  his  libera- 
tion from  the  spell  of  metaphysics  was  complete.  "  From 
this  time,"  he  says,  *'  to  my  nineteenth  year,  when  I  quitted 
school  for  Jesus,  Cambridge,  was  the  era  of  poetry  and  love." 
Of  Coleridge's  university  days  we  know  less ;  but  the 
account  of  his  schoolfellow,  Charles  Le  Grice,  accords,  so 
far  as  it  goes,  with  what  would  have  been  anticipated  from 
the  poet's  school  life.  Although  "  very  studious,"  and  not 
unambitious  of  academical  honours — within  a  few  months 
of  his  entering  at  Jesus  he  won  the  Browne  Gold  Medal 
for  a  Greek  Ode  on  the  Slave-trade* — his  reading,  his 
friend  admits,  was  "  desultory  and  capricious.     He  took 

'  Gillman,  pp.  22,  23. 

*  Of  this  Coleridge  afterwards  reraarkcd  with  justice  that  its 
"  ideas  were  better  than  the  language  or  metre  in  which  they  were 
conveyed."  Porson,  with  little  magnanimity,  as  De  Quincey  com- 
plains, was  severe  upon  its  Greek,  but  its  main  conception — an  ap- 
peal to  Death  to  come,  a  welcome  deliverer  to  the  slaves,  and  to  bear 
them  to  shores  whore  "  they  may  tell  their  beloved  ones  what  horrors 
they,  being  men,  had  endured  from  men" — is  moving  and  effective. 
De  Quince}',  however,  was  undoubtedly  right  in  his  opinion  that 
Coleridge's  Greek  scliolarship  was  not  of  the  exact  order.  Xo  exact 
scholar  could,  for  instance,  have  died  in  the  faith  (as  Coleridge  did) 
that  tar>)<je  (S.  T.  C.)  means  "  he  stood,"  and  not  "  he  placed." 


I.]  CAMBRIDGE.  9 

little  exercise  merely  for  the  sake  of  exercise,  but  he  was 
ready  at  any  time  to  unbend  his  mind  in  conversation, 
and  for  the  sake  of  this  his  room  ^Yas  a  constant  rendez- 
vous of  conversation-loving  friends.  I  will  not  call  them 
loungers,  for  they  did  not  call  to  kill  time  but  to  enjoy 
it."  From  the  same  record  we  gather  that  Coleridge's 
interest  in  current  politics  was  already  keen,  and  that  he 
was  an  eager  reader,  not  only  of  Burke's  famous  contribu- 
tions thereto,  but  even  a  devourcr  of  all  the  pamphlets 
which  swarmed  during  tliat  agitated  period  from  the  press. 
The  desultory  student,  however,  did  not  altogether  inter- 
mit his  academical  studies.  In  1793  he  competed  for,an- 
other  Greek  verse  prize,  this  time  unsuccessfully.  He  af- 
terwards described  his  ode  0)i  Astronomy  as  "  the  finest 
Greek  poem  I  ever  wrote  ;"  '  but,  whatever  may  have  been 
its  merits  from  the  point  of  view  of  scholarship,  the  Eng- 
lish translation  of  it,  made  eight  years  after  by  Southey 
(in  which  form  alone  it  now  exists),  seems  hardly  to  estab- 
lish its  title  to  the  peculiar  merit  claimed  by  its  author  for 
his  earlier  effort.  The  long  vacation  of  this  year,  spent  by 
him  in  Devonshire,  is  also  interesting  as  having  given  birth 
to  one  of  the  most  characteristic  of  the  Juvenile  Poems, 
the  Songs  of  the  Pixies,  and  the  closing  months  of  1793 
were  marked  by  the  most  singular  episode  in  the  poet's 
earlier  career. 

It  is  now  perhaps  impossible  to  ascertain  whether  the 

'  Adding,  "  that  which  gained  the  prize  was  contemptible  " —  an 
expression  of  opinion  hardly  in  accordance  with  Le  Gricc's  statement 
(" Eecollections "  in  Gentleman's  Magazine  for  1836)  tliat  "no  one 
was  more  convinced  of  the  propriety  of  the  decision  than  Coleridge 
himself."  Mr.  Le  Grice,  however,  bears  valuable  testimony  to  Cole- 
ridge's disappointment,  though  I  think  he  exaggerates  its  influence  in 
determining  his  career. 


10  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

cause  of  this  strange  adventure  of  Coleridge's  was  "chagrin 
at  his  disappointment  in  a  love  affair  "  or  "  a  fit  of  dejec- 
tion and  despondency  caused  by  some  debts  not  amounting 
to  a  hundred  pounds ;"  but,  actuated  by  some  impulse  or 
other  of  restless  disquietude,  Coleridge  suddenly  quitted 
Cambridge  and  came  up,  very  slenderly  provided  with 
money,  to  London,  where,  after  a  few  days'  sojourn,  he 
was  compelled  by  pressure  of  actual  need  to  enlist,  under 
the  name  of  Silas  Titus  Coraberback*  (S.  T.  C),  as  a  pri- 
vate in  the  15th  Light  Dragoons.  It  may  seem  strange  to 
say  so,  but  it  strikes  one  as  quite  conceivable  that  the 
wodd  might  have  been  a  gainer  if  fate  had  kept  Coleridge 
a  little  longer  in  the  ranks  than  the  four  months  of  his 
actual  service.  As  it  was,  however,  his  military  experi- 
ences, unlike  those  of  Gibbon,  were  of  no  subsequent  ad- 
vantage to  him.  He  was,  as  he  tells  us,  an  execrable  rider, 
a  negligent  groom  of  his  horse,  and,  generally,  a  slack  and 
slovenly  trooper;  but  before  drill  and  discipline  had  had 
time  to  make  a  smart  soldier  of  him,  he  chanced  to  attract 
the  attention  of  his  captain  by  having  written  a  Latin  quo- 
tation on  the  white  wall  of  the  stables  at  Reading.  This 
officer,  who  it  seems  was  cither  able  to  translate  the  ejac- 
ulation, "  Eheu !  quara  infortunii  miserrimum  est  fuisse 
felicem,"  *  or,  at  any  rate,  to  recognise  the  language  it  was 

'  It  is  characteristic  of  the  punctilious  inaccuracy  of  Mr.  Cottle 
{Recollections,  ii.  54)  that  he  should  insist  that  the  assumed  name  was 
*'  Cumberbatch,  not  Comberback,"  though  Coleridge  has  himself  fixed 
the  real  name  by  the  jest,  "  My  habits  were  so  little  equestrian  that 
my  horse,  I  doubt  not,  was  of  that  opinion."  This  circumstance, 
though  trifling,  does  not  predispose  us  to  accept  unquestioningly  Mr. 
Cottle's  highly  particularised  account  of  Coleridge's  experience  with 
his  regiment. 

*  "In  omni  adversitate  fortunae,  infelicissimum  genus  est  infor- 
tunii fuisse  felicem." — Boethivs. 


1.]  CAMBRIDGE.  11 

written  in,  interested  himself  forthwith  on  behalf  of  his 
scholarly  recruit.*  Coleridge's  discharge  was  obtained  at 
llounslow  on  April  10,  1794,  and  he  returned  to  Cam- 
bridge. 

The  year  was  destined  to  be  eventful  for  him  in  more 
ways  than  one.  In  June  he  went  to  Oxford  to  pay  a  visit 
to  an  old  schoolfellow,  where  an  accidental  introduction  to 
Robert  Southey,  then  an  undergraduate  of  Balliol,  laid  the 
foundation  of  a  friendship  destined  largely  to  influence 
their  future  lives.  In  the  course  of  the  following  August 
he  came  to  Bristol,  where  ho  was  met  by  Southey,  and 
by  him  introduced  to  Robert  Lovell,  through  whom  and 
Southey  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  two  persons  of  con- 
siderable, if  not  exactly  equal,  importance  to  any  young 
author  —  his  first  publisher  and  his  future  wife.  Robert 
Lovell  already  knew  Mr.  Joseph  Cottle,  brother  of  Amos 
Cottle  (Byron's  "0!  Amos  Cottle!  Phoebus!  what  a 
name"),  and  himself  a  poet  of  some  pretensions;  and  he 
had  married  Mary  Fricker,  one  of  whose  sisters,  Edith,  was 
already  engaged  to  Southey  ;  while  another,  Sara,  was  aft- 
erwards to  become  Mrs.  Coleridge. 

As  the  marriage  turned  out  on  the  whole  an  unhappy 
one,  the  present  may  be  a  convenient  moment  for  consid- 
ering how  far  its  future  character  was  determined  by  pre- 
viously existing  and  unalterable  conditions,  and  how  far 
it  may  be  regarded  as  the  result  of  subsequent  events. 
De  Quincey,  whose  acute  and  in  many  respects  most  val- 
uable monograph  on  the  poet  touches  its  point  of  least 
trustworthiness  in  matters  of  this  kind,  declares  roundly, 
and  on  the  alleged  authority  of  Coleridge  himself,  that 

•  Miss  Mitford,  in  her  BecoUeclions  of  a  Literary  Life,  interestingly 
records  the  active  share  taken  by  her  father  in  procuring  the  learned 
trooper's  discharge. 


12  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

tlie  very  prlmaiy  and  essential  prerequisite  of  happiness 
was  wanting  to  the  union.  Coleridge,  he  says,  assured 
him  that  his  marriage  was  "  not  his  own  deliberate  act, 
but  was  in  a  manner  forced  upon  his  sense  of  honour  by 
the  scrupulous  Southey,  who  insisted  that  he  had  gone  too 
far  in  his  attentions  to  Miss  Fricker  for  any  honourable  re- 
treat." On  the  other  hand,  he  adds,  "  a  neutral  spectator 
of  the  parties  protested  to  me  that  if  ever  in  his  life  he 
had  seen  a  man  under  deep  fascination,  and  what  he  would 
have  called  desperately  in  love,  Coleridge,  in  relation  to 
Miss  F.,  was  that  man."  One  need  not,  I  think,  feel  much 
hesitation  in  preferring  this  "neutral  spectator's"  state- 
ment to  that  of  the  discontented  husband,  made  several 
years  after  the  mutual  estrangement  of  the  couple,  and 
with  no  great  propriety  perhaps,  to  a  new  acquaintance. 
There  is  abundant  evidence  in  his  own  poems  alone  that  at 
the  time  of,  and  for  at  least  two  or  three  years  subsequent- 
ly to,  his  marriage  Coleridge's  feeling  towards  his  wife  was 
one  of  profound  and  indeed  of  ardent  attachment.  It  is 
of  course  quite  possible  that  the  passion  of  so  variable,  im- 
pulsive, and  irresolute  a  temperament  as  his  may  have  had 
its  hot  and  cold  fits,  and  that  during  one  of  the  latter 
phases  Southey  may  have  imagined  that  his  friend  needed 
some  such  remonstrance  as  that  referred  to.  But  this  is 
not  nearly  enough  to  support  the  assertion  that  Coleridge's 
marriage  was  "  in  a  manner  forced  upon  his  sense  of  hon- 
our," and  was  not  his  own  deliberate  act.  It  was  as  de- 
liberate as  any  of  his  other  acts  during  the  years  1794  and 
I'ZOS, — that  is  to  say,  it  was  as  wholly  inspired  by  the  en- 
thusiasm of  the  moment,  and  as  utterly  ungoverned  by 
anything  in  the  nature  of  calculation  on  the  possibilities  of 
tlic  future.  He  fell  in  love  with  Sara  Fricker  as  he  fell  in 
love  with  the  French  Revolution  and  with  the  scheme  of 


I.]  UKISTOL.  13 

"  Pantisocracy,"  and  it  is  indeed  extremely  probable  that  the 
emotions  of  the  lover  and  the  socialist  may  have  subtly  acted 
and  reacted  upon  each  other.  The  Pantisocratic  scheme  was 
essentially  based  at  its  outset  upon  a  union  of  kindred  souls, 
for  it  was  clearly  necessary  of  course  that  each  male  mem- 
ber of  the  little  community  to  be  founded  on  the  banks  of 
the  Susquehanna  should  take  with  him  a  wife.  Southey 
and  Lovell  had  theirs  in  the  persons  of  two  sisters;  they 
were  his  friends  and  fellow-workers  in  the  scheme ;  and 
they  had  a  sympathetic  sister-in-law  disengaged.  Fate 
therefore  seemed  to  designate  her  for  Coleridge,  and  with 
the  personal  attraction  which  she  no  doubt  exerted  over  him 
there  may  well  have  mingled  a  dash  of  that  mysterious  pas- 
sion for  symmetry  which  prompts  a  man  to  "  complete  the 
set."  After  all,  too,  it  must  be  remembered  that,  though 
Mrs.  Coleridge  did  not  permanently  retain  her  hold  upon 
her  husband's  affections,  she  got  considerably  the  better 
of  those  who  shared  them  with  her.  Coleridge  found  out 
the  objections  to  Pantisocracy  in  a  very  short  space  of 
time,  and  a  decided  coolness  had  sprung  up  between  him 
and  Madame  la  Revolution  before  another  two  years  had 
passed. 

The  whole  history  indeed  of  this  latter  liaison  is  most 
remarkable,  and  no  one,  it  seems  to  me,  can  hope  to  form 
an  adequate  conception  of  Coleridge's  essential  instability 
of  character  without  bestowing  somewhat  closer  attention 
upon  this  passage  in  his  intellectual  development  than  it 
usually  receives.  It  is  not  uncommon  to  see  the  cases  of 
Wordsworth,  Southey,  and  Coleridge  lumped  together  in- 
discriminately, as  interequivalent  ilkistrations  of  the  way 
ill  which  the  young  and  generous  minds  of  that  era  were 
first  fascinated  and  then  repelled  by  the  French  Revolu- 
tion.    As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  last  of  the  three 


14  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

cases  differed  in  certain  very  important  respects  from  the 
two  former.  Coleridge  not  only  took  the  "  frenzy-fever  " 
in  a  more  violent  form  than  either  Wordsworth  or  Southey, 
and  uttered  wilder  things  in  his  delirium  than  they,  but 
the  paroxysm  was  much  shorter,  the  immediate  reaction 
more  violent  in  its  effects,  and  brought  about  by  slighter 
causes  in  his  case  than  in  theirs.  This  will  appear  more 
clearly  when  we  come  to  contrast  the  poems  of  1794  and 
1795  with  those  of  1797.  For  the  present  it  must  suffice 
to  say  that  while  the  history  of  Coleridge's  relations  to 
the  French  Revolution  is  intellectually  more  interesting 
than  that  of  Wordsworth's  and  Southey's,  it  plainly  indi- 
cates, even  in  that  early  period  of  the  three  lives,  a  mind 
far  more  at  the  mercy  of  essentially  transitory  sentiment 
than  belonged  to  either  of  the  others,  and  far  less  disposed 
than  theirs  to  review  the  aspirations  of  the  moment  by  the 
steady  light  of  the  practical  judgment. 

This,  however,  is  anticipating  matters.  We  are  still  in 
the  summer  of  1794,  and  we  left  Coleridge  at  Bristol  with 
Southey,  Lovell,  and  the  Miss  Frickcrs.  To  this  year  be- 
longs that  remarkable  experiment  in  playwriting  at  high 
pressure.  The  Fall  of  Rohesjnerre.  It  originated,  we  learn 
from  Southey,  in  "a  sportive  conversation  at  poor  Lov- 
ell's,"  when  each  of  the  three  friends  agreed  to  produce 
one  act  of  a  tragedy,  on  the  subject  indicated  in  the  above 
title,  by  the  following  evening.  Coleridge  was  to  write 
the  first,  Southey  the  second,  and  Lovell  the  third.  Southey 
and  Lovell  appeared  the  next  day  with  their  acts  complete, 
Coleridge,  characteristically,  with  only  a  part  of  his.  Lov- 
ell's,  however,  was  found  not  to  be  in  keeping  with  the 
other  two,  so  Southey  supplied  the  third  as  well  as  the 
second,  by  which  time  Coleridge  had  completed  the  first. 
The  tragedy  was  afterwards  published  entire,  and  is  usual- 


I.]  CAMBRIDGE.  15 

ly  included  iu  complete  editions  of  Coleridge's  poetical 
works.  It  is  an  extremely  immature  production,  abound- 
ing in  such  coquettings  (if  nothing  more  serious)  with  ba- 
thos as 

"Now, 
Aloof  tliou  standest  from  the  tottering  pillar, 
And  like  a  frighted  child  behind  its  mother, 
Hidest  thy  pale  face  in  the  skirts  of  Mercy ;" 


and 


"  Liberty,  condensed  awhile,  is  bursting 
To  scatter  the  arch-chemist  in  the  explosion." 


Coleridge  also  contributed  to  Southey's  Joan  of  Arc  cer- 
tain lines  of  which,  many  years  afterwards,  he  wrote  in 
this  humorously  exaggerated  but  by  no  means  wholly  un- 
just tone  of  censure: — "I  was  really  astonished  (l)  at  the 
schoolboy,  wretched,  allegoric  machinery  ;  (2)  at  the  trans- 
mogrification of  the  fanatic  Virago  into  a  modern  novel- 
pawing  proselyte  of  the  Age  of  Reason — a  Tom  Paine  in 
petticoats  ;  (3)  at  the  utter  want  of  all  rhythm  in  the  verse, 
the  monotony  and  dead  phnnb-down  of  the  pauses,  and 
at  the  absence  of  all  bone,  muscle,  and  sinew  in  the  single 
lines." 

In  September  Coleridge  returned  to  Cambridge,  to  keep 
what  turned  out  to  be  his  last  term  at  Jesus.  We  may 
fairly  suppose  that  he  had  already  made  up  his  mind  to 
bid  adieu  to  the  Alma  Mater  whose  bosom  he  was  about 
to  quit  for  that  of  a  more  venerable  and,  as  he  then  believed, 
a  gentler  mother  on  the  banks  of  the  Susquehanna ;  but  it 
is  not  impossible  that  in  any  case  his  departure  might  have 
been  expedited  by  the  remonstrances  of  college  authority. 
Dr.  Pearce,  Master  of  Jesus,  and  afterwards  Dean  of  Ely, 
did  all  he  could,  records  a  friend  of  a  somewhat  later  date, 
"to  keep  him  within  bounds;  but  his  repeated  efforts  to 
2 


16  COLERIDGE.  [chap.  i. 

reclaim  him  were  to  no  purpose,  and  upon  one  occasion, 
after  a  long  discussion  on  the  visionary  and  ruinous  ten- 
dency of  his  later  schemes,  Coleridge  cut  short  the  argu- 
ment by  bluntly  assuring  him,  his  friend  and  master,  that 
he  mistook  the  matter  altogether.  He  was  neither  Jaco- 
bin,* he  said,  nor  Democrat,  but  a  Pantisocrat."  And, 
leaving  the  good  doctor  to  digest  this  new  and  strange  epi- 
thet, Coleridge  bade  farewell  to  his  college  and  his  univer- 
sity, and  went  forth  into  that  world  with  which  he  was  to 
wage  so  painful  and  variable  a  struggle. 

*  Carrlyon's  Early  Years  and  late  Rejlections,  vol.  i.  p.  27. 


CHAPTER  11. 

THE  BRISTOL  LECTURES. — MARRLA.GE. — LIFE  AT  CLEVEDON. — 
THE  "WATCHMAN." — RETIREMENT  TO  STOWET.— INTRODUC- 
TION TO  WORDSWORTH. 

[1794-1797.] 

The  reflections  of  the  worthy  Master  of  Jesus  upon  the 
strange  reply  of  the  wayward  young  undergraduate  would 
have  been  involved  in  even  greater  perplexity  if  he  could 
have  looked  forward  a  few  months  into  the  future.  For 
after  a  winter  spent  in  London,  and  enlivened  by  those 
nodes  coenceqiie  Deum  at  the  "  Cat  and  Salutation,"  which 
Lamb  has  so  charmingly  recorded,  Coleridge  returned  with 
Southey  to  Bristol  at  the  beginning  of  1795,  and  there 
proceeded  to  deliver  a  series  of  lectures  which,  whatever 
their  other  merits,  would  certainly  not  have  assisted  Dr. 
Pearce  to  grasp  the  distinction  between  a  Pantisocrat  and 
a  Jacobin.  As  a  scholar  and  a  man  of  literary  taste  he 
might  possibly  have  admired  the  rhetorical  force  of  the 
following  outburst,  but,  considering  that  the  "  he  "  here 
gibbeted  in  capitals  was  no  less  a  personage  than  the 
"  heaven-born  minister  "  himself,  a  plain  man  might  well 
have  wondered  what  additional  force  the  vocabulary  of 
Jacobinism  could  have  infused  into  the  language  of  Pan- 
tisocracy.  After  summing  up  the  crimes  of  the  Reign  of 
Terror  the  lecturer  asks :  "  Who,  my  brethren,  was  the 
cause  of  this  guilt  if  not  he  who  supplied  the  occasion  and 


18  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

the  motive  ?  Heaven  hath  bestowed  on  that  man  a  por- 
tion of  its  ubiquity,  and  given  him  an  actual  presence  in 
the  sacraments  of  hell,  wherever  administered,  in  all  the 
bread  of  bitterness,  in  all  the  cups  of  blood."  And  in 
general,  indeed,  the  Condones  ad  Populum,  as  Coleridge 
named  these  lectures  on  their  subsequent  publication,  were 
rather  calculated  to  bewilder  any  of  the  youthful  lectur- 
er's well-wishers  who  might  be  anxious  for  some  means  of 
discriminating  his  attitude  from  that  of  the  Hardys,  the 
Home  Tookes,  and  the  Thelwalls  of  the  day.  A  little 
warmth  of  language  might  no  doubt  be  allowed  to  a  young 
friend  of  liberty  in  discussing  legislation  which,  in  the  ret- 
rospect, has  staggered  even  so  staunch  a  Tory  as  Sir  Ar- 
chibald Alison ;  but  Coleridge's  denunciation  of  the  Pitt 
and  Grenville  Acts,  in  a  lecture  entitled  The  Plot  Discov- 
ered, is  occasionally  startling,  even  for  that  day  of  fierce 
passions,  in  the  fierceness  of  its  language.  It  is  interesting, 
however,  to  note  the  ever-active  play  of  thought  and  rea- 
soning amid  the  very  storm  and  stress  of  political  passion. 
Coleridge  is  never  for  long  together  a  mere  declaimer  on 
popular  rights  and  ministerial  tyranny,  and  even  this  in- 
dignant address  contains  a  passage  of  extremely  just  and 
thoughtful  analysis  of  the  constituent  elements  of  despot- 
ism. Throughout  the  spring  and  summer  of  1795  Cole- 
ridge continued  his  lectures  at  Bristol,  his  head  still  sim- 
mering— though  less  violently,  it  may  be  suspected,  every 
month — with  Pantisocracy,  and  certainly  with  all  his  kin- 
dred political  and  religious  enthusiasms  unabated.  A  study 
of  these  crude  but  vigorous  addresses  reveals  to  us,  as  does 
the  earlier  of  the  early  poems,  a  mind  struggling  with  its 
half-formed  and  ever-changing  conceptions  of  the  world, 
and,  as  is  usual  at  such  peculiar  phases  of  an  intellectual 
development,  affirming  its  temporary  beliefs  with  a  fervour 


H.]  MARRIAGE.  19 

mid  vehemence  directly  proportioned  to  tlie  recency  of 
their  birth.  Commenting  on  the  Condones  ad  Pojmlum 
many  years  afterwards,  and  invoking  them  as  witnesses  to 
his  political  consistency  as  an  author,  Coleridge  remarked 
that  with  the  exception  of  "two  or  three  pages  involving 
the  doctrine  of  philosophical  necessity  and  TJnitarianism," 
he  saw  little  or  nothing  in  these  outbursts  of  his  youthful 
zeal  to  retract,  and,  with  the  exception  of  "  some  flame- 
coloured  epithets"  applied  to  persons,  as  to  Mr.  Pitt  and 
others,  "or  rather  to  personifications" — for  sucli,  he  says, 
they  really  were  to  him — as  little  to  regret. 

We  now,  however,  arrive  at  an  event  important  in  the 
life  of  every  man,  and  which  influenced  that  of  Coleridge 
to  an  extent  not  the  less  certainly  extraordinary  because 
difiicult,  if  not  impossible,  to  define  with  exactitude.  On 
the  4th  of  October,  1795,  Coleridge  was  married  at  St. 
Mary  Redcliffe  Church,  Bristol,  to  Sarah  (or  as  he  pre- 
ferred to  spell  it  Sara)  Fricker,  and  withdrew  for  a  time 
from  the  eager  intellectual  life  of  a  political  lecturer  to  the 
contemplative  quiet  appropriate  to  the  honeymoon  of  a 
poet,  spent  in  a  sequestered  cottage  amid  beautiful  scenery, 
and  within  sound  of  the  sea.  No  wonder  that  among  such 
surroundings,  and  with  such  belongings,  the  honeymoon 
should  have  extended  from  one  month  to  three,  and  indeed 
that  Coleridge  should  have  waited  till  his  youthful  yearn- 
ings for  a  life  of  action,  and  perhaps  (though  that  would 
have  lent  itself  less  gracefully  to  his  poem  of  farewell  to 
his  Clevedon  cottage)  his  increasing  sense  of  the  necessity 
of  supplementing  the  ambrosia  of  love  with  the  bread  and 
cheese  of  mortals,  compelled  him  to  re-enter  the  world. 
No  wonder  he  should  have  delayed  to  do  so,  for  it  is  as 
easy  to  perceive  in  his  poems  that  these  were  days  of  un- 
clouded happiness  as  it  is  melancholy  to  reflect  by  how 


20  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

few  others  like  tbem  his  life  was  destined  to  be  brightened. 
The  u^oUan  liar})  has  no  more  than  the  moderate  merits, 
with  its  full  share  of  the  characteristic  faults,  of  his  ear- 
lier productions;  but  one  cannot  help  "reading  into  it" 
the  poet's  after-life  of  disappointment  and  disillu^on — es- 
trangement from  the  "  beloved  woman  "  in  whose  aifection 
he  was  then  reposing;  decay  and  disappearance  of  those 
"flitting  phantasies"  with  which  he  was  then  so  joyously 
trifling,  and  the  bitterly  ironical  scholia  which  fate  was 
preparing  for  such  lines  as 

"And  tranquil  muse  upon  tranquillity." 

One  cannot  in  fact  refrain  from  mentally  comparing  the 
^olian  Harp  of  1795  with  the  Dejection  of  1803,  and 
no  one  who  has  thoroughly  felt  the  spirit  of  both  poems 
can  make  that  comparison  without  emotion.  The  former 
piece  is  not,  as  has  been  said,  in  a  literary  sense  remark- 
able. With  the  exception  of  the  one  point  of  metrical 
style,  to  be  touched  on  presently,  it  has  almost  no  note  of 
poetic  distinction  save  such  as  belongs  of  right  to  any 
simple  record  of  a  mood  which  itself  forms  the  highest 
poetry  of  the  average  man's  life ;  and  one  well  knows 
whence  came  the  criticism  of  that  MS.  note  inscribed  by 
S.  T.  C.  in  a  copy  of  the  second  edition  of  his  early  po- 
ems, "  This  I  think  the  most  perfect  poem  I.  ever  wrote. 
Bad  may  be  the  best,  perhaps."  One  feels  that  the  an- 
notator  might  just  as  well  have  written,  "  How  perfect  was 
the  happiness  which  this  poem  recalls!"  for  this  is  really 
all  that  Coleridge's  eulogium,  with  its  touching  bias  from 
the  hand  of  memory,  amounts  to. 

It  has  become  time,  however,  to  speak  more  generally 
of  Coleridge's  early  poems.  The  peaceful  winter  months 
of  IVOS-OG  were  in  all  likelihood  spent  in  arranging  and 


11.]  LIFE  AT  CLEVEDON.  21 

revising  the  products  of  tliose  poetic  impulses  which  had 
more  or  less  actively  stirred  within  him  from  his  seven- 
teenth year  upwards;  and  in  April,  1797,  there  appeared 
at  Bristol  a  volume  of  sonic  fifty  pieces  entitled  Poems  on 
Various  Subjects,  by  S.  T.  Coleridge,  late  of  Jesus  College, 
Cambridge,  It  was  published  by  his  friend  Cottle,  who, 
in  a  mixture  of  the  generous  with  the  speculative  instinct, 
had  given  him  thirty  guineas  for  the  copyright.  Its  con- 
tents are  of  a  miscellaneous  kind,  consisting  partly  of 
rhymed  irregular  odes,  partly  of  a  collection  of  Sonnets 
on  Eminent  Characters,  and  partly  (and  principally)  of  a 
blank-verse  poem  of  several  hundred  lines,  then,  and  in- 
deed for  years  afterwards,  regarded  by  many  of  the  poet's 
admirers  as  his  masterpiece — the  Religious  Musings.^ 

To  the  second  edition  of  these  poems,  which  was  pub- 
lished in  the  following  year,  Coleridge,  at  all  times  a  can- 
did critic  (to  the  limited  extent  to  which  it  is  possible  even 
for  the  finest  judges  to  be  so)  of  his  own  works,  prefixed 
a  preface,  wherein  he  remarks  that  his  poems  have  been 
"  rightly  charged  with  a  profusion  of  double  epithets  and 
a  general  turgidness,"  and  adds  that  he  has  "pruned  the 
double  epithets  with  no  sparing  hand,"  and  used  his  best 
efforts  to  tame  the  swell  and  glitter  both  of  thought  and 
diction.  "  The  latter  fault,  however,  had,"  he  continues, 
"  so  insinuated  itself  into  ray  Religious  Musings  with  such 
intricacy  of  union  that  sometimes  I  have  omitted  to  dis- 
entangle the  weed  from  fear  of  snapping  the  flower." 
This  is  plain-spoken  criticism,  but  I  do  not  think  that  any 
reader  who  is  competent  to  pronounce  judgment  on  the 
point  will  be  inclined  to  deprecate  its  severity.  Nay,  in 
order  to  get  done  with  fault-finding  as  soon  as  possible,  it 

'  The  volume  contained  also  three  sonnets  by  Charles  Lamb,  one 
of  which  was  destined  to  have  a  somewhat  curious  history. 


22  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

must  perhaps  be  added  that  the  admitted  turgidness  of  the 
poems  is  often  something  more  than  a  mere  defect  of  style, 
and  that  the  verse  is  turgid  because  the  feeling  which  it 
expresses  is  exaggerated.  The  "  youthful  bard  unknown 
to  fame"  who,  in  the  Songs  of  the  Pixies,  is  made  to 
"  heave  the  gentle  misery  of  a  sigh,"  is  only  doing  a  nat- 
ural thing  described  in  ludicrously  and  unnaturally  stilted 
terms;  but  the  young  admirer  of  the  Robbers,  who  in- 
forms Schiller  that  if  he  were  to  meet  him  in  the  evening 
wandering  in  his  loftier  mood  "  beneath  some  vast  old 
tempest-swinging  wood,"  he  would  "  gaze  upon  him  a  while 
in  mute  awe"  and  then  "weep  aloud  in  a  wild  ecstasy," 
endangers  the  reader's  gravity  not  so  much  by  extrava- 
gance of  diction  as  by  over-effusiveness  of  sentiment.  The 
former  of  these  two  offences  differs  from  the  latter  by  the 
difference  between  "fustian"  and  "gush."  And  there  is, 
in  fact,  more  frequent  exception  to  be  taken  to  the  charac- 
ter of  the  thought  in  these  poems  than  to  that  of  the  style. 
The  remarkable  gift  of  eloquence,  which  seems  to  have 
belonged  to  Coleridge  from  boyhood,  tended  naturally  to 
aggravate  that  very  common  fault  of  young  poets  whose 
faculty  of  expression  has  outstripped  the  growth  of  their 
intellectual  and  emotional  experiences — the  fault  of  wordi- 
ness. Page  after  page  of  the  poems  of  1796  is  filled  with 
what  one  cannot,  on  the  most  favourable  terms,  rank 
higher  than  rhetorical  commonplace;  stanza  after  stanza 
falls  pleasantly  upon  the  ear  without  suggesting  any  image 
sufficiently  striking  to  arrest  the  eye  of  the  imagination, 
or  awakening  any  thought  sufficiently  novel  to  lay  hold 
upon  the  mind.  The  jEolian  Harp  has  been  already  re- 
ferred to  as  a  pleasing  poem,  and  reading  it,  as  we  must, 
in  constant  recollection  of  the  circumstances  in  which  it 
was  written,  it  unquestionably  is  so.     But  in  none  of  the 


II.]  EARLY  POEMS.  23 

descriptions  either  of  external  objects  or  of  internal  feel- 
ing whicli  are  to  be  found  in  this  and  its  companion-piece, 
the  Reflections  on  having  left  a  Place  of  Retirement,  is 
there  anything  which  can  fairly  be  said  to  elevate  them 
above  the  level  of  graceful  verse.     It  is  only  in  the  region 
of  the  fantastic  and  supernatural  that  Coleridge's  imagina- 
tion, as  he  was  destined  to  show  by  a  far  more  splendid 
example  two  years  afterwards,  seems  to  acquire  true  poetic 
distinction.      It  is  in  the   Songs  of  the  Pixies  that  the 
young  man  "  heaves  the  gentle  misery  of  a  sigh,"  and  the 
sympathetic  interest  of  the  reader  of  to-day  is  chilled  by 
the  too  frequent  intrusion  of  certain  abstract  ladies,  each 
preceded  by  her  capital  letter  and  attended  by  her  "  ad- 
jective-in-waiting;"  but,  after  all  deductions  for  the  con- 
ventionalisms of  "  white-robed  Purity,"  "  meek-eyed  Pity," 
"graceful  Ease,"  etc.,  one  cannot  but  feel  that  the  Songs 
of  the  Pixies  was  the  offspring  not  of  a  mere  abundant 
and  picturesque  vocabulary  but  of  a  true  poetic  fancy.     It 
is  worth  far  more  as  an  earnest  of  future  achievement  than 
the  very  unequal  Monody  on  the  Death  of  Chatterton  (for 
which  indeed  we  ought  to  make  special  allowance,  as  hav- 
ing been  commenced  in  the  author's  eighteenth  year),  and 
certainly  than  anything  which  could  be  quoted  from  the 
Effusions,  as  Coleridge,  unwilling  to  challenge  comparison 
with  the  divine  Bowles,  had  chosen  to  describe  his  sonnets. 
It  must  be  honestly  said,  indeed,  that  these  are,  a  very  few 
excepted,  among  the  least  satisfactory  productions  of  any 
period  of  his  poetic  career.     Tlie  Coleridgian  sonnet  is  not 
only  imperfect  in  form  and  in  marked  contrast  in  the  fre- 
quent bathos  of  its  close  to  the  steady  swell  and  climax  of 
Wordsworth,  but,  in  by  far  the  majority  of  instances  in 
this  volume,  it  is  wanting  in  internal  weight.    The  "  single 
pebble"  of  thought  which  a  sonnet  should  enclose  is  not 
C       2'" 


24  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

only  not  neatly  wrapped  up  in  its  envelope  of  words,  but 
it  is  very  often  not  heavy  enough  to  carry  itself  and  its 
covering  to  the  mark.  When  it  is  so,  its  weight,  as  in  the 
sonnet  to  Pitt,  is  too  frequently  only  another  word  for  an 
ephemeral  violence  of  political  feeling  which,  whether  dis- 
played on  one  side  or  the  other,  cannot  be  expected  to  re- 
produce its  effect  in  the  minds  of  comparatively  passion- 
less posterity.  Extravagances,  too,  abound,  as  when  in 
Kosciusko  Freedom  is  made  to  look  as  if,  in  a  fit  of  "  wil- 
fulness and  sick  despair,"  she  had  drained  a  mystic  urn 
containing  all  the  tears  that  had  ever  found  "  fit  channel 
on  a  Patriot's  furrowed  cheek."  The  main  difficulty  of 
the  metre,  too — that  of  avoiding  forced  rhymes — is  rarely 
surmounted.     Even  in  the  three  fine  lines  in  the  Burke — 

"  Thee  stormy  Pity,  and  the  cherished  lure 
Of  Pomp  and  proud  precipitance  of  soul, 
'Wildered  with  meteor  fires  " — 

we  cannot  help  feeling  that  "lure"  is  extremely  harsh, 
while  the  weakness  of  the  two  concluding  lines  of  the 
sonnet  supplies  a  typical  example  of  the  disappointment 
which  these  "  effusions  "  so  often  prepare  for  their  readers. 
Enough,  however,  has  been  said  of  the  faults  of  these 
early  poems ;  it  remains  to  consider  their  merits,  foremost 
among  which,  as  might  be  expected,  is  the  wealth  and 
splendour  of  their  diction  in  these  passages,  in  which  such 
display  is  all  that  is  needed  for  the  literary  ends  of  the 
moment.  Over  all  that  wide  region  of  literature,  in  which 
force  and  fervour  of  utterance,  depth  and  sincerity  of  feel- 
ing avail,  without  the  nameless  magic  of  poetry  in  the 
higher  sense  of  the  word,  to  achieve  the  objects  of  the 
writer  and  to  satisfy  the  mind  of  the  reader,  Coleridge 
ranges  with  a  free  and  sure  footstep.     It  is  no  disparage- 


II.]  EARLY  rOEMS.  25 

ment  to  his  Religioiis  Mtisin(js  to  say  that  it  is  to  this 
class  of  literature  that  it  belongs.  Ilaving  said  this,  how- 
ever, it  must  be  added  that  poetry  of  the  second  order 
has  seldom  risen  to  higher  heights  of  power.  The  faults 
already  admitted  disfigure  it  here  and  there.  We  have 
"moon-blasted  Madness  when  he  yells  at  midnight;"  we 
read  of  "eye-starting  wretches  and  rapture-trembling  ser- 
aphim," and  the  really  striking  image  of  Ruin,  the  "old 
hag,  unconquerable,  huge.  Creation's  eyeless  drudge,"  is 
marred  by  making  her  "  nurse  "  an  "  impatient  earthquake." 
But  there  is  that  in  Coleridge's  aspirations  and  apostrophes 
to  the  Deity  which  impresses  one  even  more  profoundly 
than  the  mere  magnificence,  remarkable  as  it  is,  of  their 
rhetorical  clothing.  They  are  touched  with  so  penetrat- 
ing a  sincerity  ;  they  are  so  obviously  the  outpourings  of 
an  awe-struck  heart.  Indeed,  there  is  nothing  more  re- 
markable at  this  stage  of  Coleridge's  poetic  development 
than  the  instant  elevation  which  his  verse  assumes  when- 
ever he  passes  to  Divine  things.  At  once  it  seems  to  take 
on  a  Miltonic  majesty  of  diction  and  a  Miltonic  stateliness 
of  rhythm.  The  tender  but  low-lying  domestic  sentiment 
of  the  jEol'mn  Harp  is  in  a  moment  informed  by  it  with 
the  dignity  which  marks  that  poem's  close.  Apart  too 
from  its  literary  merits,  the  biographical  interest  of  Re- 
ligious Musings  is  very  considerable.  "  Written,"  as  its 
title  declares,  but  in  reality  as  its  length  would  suggest, 
and  as  Mr.  Cottle  in  fact  tells  us,  only  completed,  "on  the 
Christmas  eve  of  1794,"  it  gives  expression  to  the  tumult- 
uous emotions  by  which  Coleridge's  mind  was  agitated  at 
this  its  period  of  highest  political  excitement.  His  revo- 
lutionary enthusiasm  was  now  at  its  hottest,  his  belief  in 
the  infant  French  Republic  at  its  fullest,  his  wrath  against 
the  "  coalesced  kings"  at  its  fiercest,  his  contempt  for  their 


26  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

religious  pretence  at  its  bitterest.  "Thee  to  defend,"  he 
cries, 

"  Thee  to  defend,  dear  Saviour  of  mankind  ! 

Tliee,  Lamb  of  God  !    Thee,  Wameless  Prince  of  Peace ! 

From  all  sides  rush  the  thirsty  brood  of  war — 

Austria,  and  that  foul  Woman  of  the  Nortli, 

The  lustful  murderess  of  her  wedded  lord, 

And  he,  connatural  mind !  whom  (in  their  songs, 

So  bards  of  elder  time  had  haply  feigned) 

Some  Fury  fondled  in  her  hate  to  man, 

Bidding  her  serpent  hair  in  tortuous  fold 

Lick  his  young  face,  and  at  his  mouth  imbreathe 

Horrible  Sympathy !" 

This  is  vigorous  poetic  invective ;  and  the  effect  of  such 
outbursts  is  heightened  by  the  rapid  subsidence  of  the 
passion  that  inspires  them  and  the  quick  advent  of  a 
calmer  mood.  We  have  hardly  turned  the  page  ere  de- 
nunciations of  Catherine  and  Frederick  William  give  place 
to  prayerful  invocations  of  the  Supreme  Being,  which  are 
in  their  turn  the  prelude  of  a  long  and  beautiful  contem- 
plative passage:  "In  the  primaeval  age,  a  dateless  while," 
etc.,  on  the  pastoral  origin  of  human  society.  It  is  as 
though  some  sweet  and  solemn  strain  of  organ  music  had 
succeeded  to  the  blast  of  war-bugles  and  the  roll  of  drums. 
In  the  Ode  to  the  Departing  Year,  written  in  the  last  days 
of  1796,  with  its  "prophecy  of  curses  though  I  pray  fer- 
vently for  blessings  "  upon  the  poet's  native  country,  the 
mood  is  more  uniform  in  its  gloom  ;  and  it  lacks  some- 
thing, therefore,  of  those  peculiar  qualities  which  make 
the  Religious  Musings  one  perhaps  of  the  most  pleasing 
of  all  Coleridge's  earlier  productions.  But  it  shares  with 
the  poems  shortly  to  be  noticed  what  may  be  called  the 
autobiographic  charm.  The  fresh,  natural  emotion  of  a 
young  and  brilliant  mind  is  eternally  interesting,  and  Cole- 


II.]  EARLY  POEMS.  27 

ridge's  youthful  Muse,  with  a  frankness  of  self-disclosure 
which  is  not  the  less  winning  because  at  times  it  provokes 
a  smile,  confides  to  us  even  the  history  of  her  most  tem- 
porary moods.  It  is,  for  instance,  at  once  amusing  and 
captivating  to  read  in  the  latest  edition  of  the  poems,  as 
a  fool-note  to  the  lines — 

"  Not  yet  enslaved,  not  wholly  vile, 
O  Albion  !  0  my  mother  isle  !" 
the  words — 

"0  doomed  to  fall,  enslaved  and  vile — 179C." 

Yes;  in  179G  and  till  the  end  of  1797  the  poet's  native 
country  toas  in  his  opinion  all  these  dreadful  things;  but 
directly  the  mood  changes,  the  verse  alters,  and  to  the  ad- 
vantage, one  cannot  but  think,  of  the  beautiful  and  often- 
quoted,  close  of  the  passage — 

"  And  Ocean  'mid  his  uproar  wild 
Speaks  safety  to  his  island  child. 

Hence  for  many  a  fearless  age 
Has  social  Quiet  loved  thy  shore, 
Nor  ever  proud  invader's  rage, 
Or  sacked  thy  towurs  or  stained  thy  fields  with  gore." 

And  whether  we  view  him  in  his  earlier  or  his  later  mood 
there  is  a  certain  strange  dignity  of  utterance,  a  singular 
confidence  in  his  own  poetic  mission,  which  forbids  us  to 
smile  at  this  prophet  of  fonr-and-twenty  who  could  thus 
conclude  his  menacing  vaticinations  : 

"  Away,  my  soul,  away ! 
I,  unpartaking  of  the  evil  thing. 

With  daily  prayer  and  daily  toil 

Soliciting  for  food  ray  scanty  soil, 
Have  wailed  my  country  with  a  loud  lament. 
Now  I  recentre  my  immortal  mind 

In  the  deep  Sabbath  of  meek  self-content. 


28  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

Cleansed  from  the  vaporous  passions  which  bedim 
God's  image,  sister  of  the  Serapliim." 

If  ever  the  consciousness  of  great  powers  and  the  assur- 
ance of  a  great  future  inspired  a  youth  with  perfect  and 
on  the  whole  well-warranted  fearlessness  of  ridicule  it  has 
surely  done  so  here. 

Poetry  alone,  however,  formed  no  sufficient  outlet  for 
Coleridge's  still  fresh  political  enthusiasm — an  enthusiasm 
which  now  became  too  importunate  to  let  him  rest  in  his 
quiet  Clevedon  cottage.  Was  it  right,  he  cries  in  his  lines 
of  leave-taking  to  his  home,  that  he  should  dream  away 
the  entrusted  hours  "  while  his  unnumbered  brethren  toiled 
and  bled?"  The  propaganda  of  Liberty  was  to  be  pushed 
forward ;  the  principles  of  Unitarianism,  to  which  Cole- 
ridge had  become  a  convert  at  Cambridge,  were  to  be 
preached.  Is  it  too  prosaic  to  add  that  what  poor  Henri 
Murger  calls  the  "chasse  aux  pieces  de  cent  sous"  was  in 
all  probability  demanding  peremptorily  to  be  resumed? 

Anyhow  it  so  fell  out  that  in  the  spring  of  the  year  1796 
Coleridge  took  his  first  singular  plunge  into  the  unquiet 
waters  of  journalism,  instigated  thereto  by  "  sundry  phi- 
lanthropists and  anti-polemists,"  whose  names  he  does  not 
record,  but  among  whom  we  may  conjecturally  place  Mr. 
Thomas  Poole  of  Stowey,  with  whom  he  had  formed  what 
was  destined  to  be  one  of  the  longest  and  closest  friend- 
ships of  his  life.  Which  of  the  two  parties — the  advisers 
or  the  advised  —  was  responsible  for  the  general  plan  of 
this  periodical  and  for  the  arrangements  for  its  publica- 
tion is  unknown  ;  but  one  of  these  last-mentioned  details 
is  enough  to  indicate  that  there  could  have  been  no  "  busi- 
ness liead  "  among  them.  Considering  that  the  motto  of 
the  Watchman  declared  the  object  of  its  issue  to  be  that 
"all  might  know  the  truth,  and  that  thetrulh  might  make 


II.]  THE  WATCHMAN.  29 

ttem  free,"  it  is  to  be  presumed  that  the  promoters  of  the 
scheme  were  not  unwilUng  to  secure  as  many  subscribers 
as  possible  for  their  sheet  of  "  thirty-two  pages,  large  oc- 
tavo, closely  printed,  price  only  fourpence."  In  order,  how- 
ever, to  exempt  it  from  the  stamp-tax,  and  with  the  much 
less  practical  object  of  making  it  "contribute  as  little  as 
possible  to  the  supposed  guilt  of  a  war  against  freedom," 
it  was  to  be  published  on  every  eighth  day,  so  that  the  week- 
day of  its  appearance  would  of  course  vary  with  each  suc- 
cessive week — an  arrangement  as  ingeniously  calculated  to 
irritate  and  alienate  its  public  as  any  perhaps  that  the  wit 
of  man  could  have  devised.  So,  however,  it  was  to  be,  and 
accordingly,  with  "a  flaming  prospectus,  'Knowledge  is 
Power,'  to  cry  the  state  of  the  political  atmosphere,"  Cole- 
ridge set  off  on  a  tour  to  the  north,  from  Bristol  to  Shef- 
field, for  the  purpose  of  procuring  customers,  preaching 
Unitarian  sermons  by  the  way  in  most  of  the  great  towns, 
"  as  an  hireless  volunteer  in  a  blue  coat  and  white  waist- 
coat, that  not  a  rag  of  the  woman  of  Babylon  might  bo 
seen  on  me."  How  he  sped  upon  his  mission  is  related  by 
him  with  infinite  humour  in  ihc  Biographia  Literaria.  He 
opened  the  campaign  at  Birmingham  upon  a  Calvinist  tal- 
low -  chandler,  who,  after  listening  to  half  an  hour's  ha- 
rangue, extending  from  "the  captivity  of  the  nations"  to 
"the' near  approach  of  the  millennium,"  and  winding  up 
with  a  quotation  describing  the  latter  "glorious  state"  out 
of  the  Religious  Musings,  inquired  what  might  be  the  cost 
of  the  new  publication.  Deeply  sensible  of  "  the  anti-cli- 
max, the  abysmal  bathos  "  of  the  answer,  Coleridge  replied, 
"  Only  fourpence,  each  number  to  be  published  every  eighth 
day,"  upon  which  the  tallow-chandler  observed  doubt- 
fully that  that  came  to  "  a  deal  of  money  at  the  end  of 
the  year."     What  determined  him,  however,  to  withhold 


30  COLERIDGE.  [chap 

his  patronage  was  not  the  price  of  the  article  but  its  quan< 
tity,  and  not  the  deficiency  of  that  quantity  but  its  excess. 
Thirty-two  pages,  he  pointed  out,  was  more  than  he  ever 
read  all  the  year  round,  and  though  "  as  great  a  one  as  any 
man  in  Brummagem  for  liberty  and  truth,  and  them  sort 
of  things,  he  begged  to  be  excused."  Had  it  been  possi- 
ble to  arrange  for  supplying  him  with  sixteen  pages  of  the 
paper  for  twopence,  a  bargain  might  no  doubt  have  been 
struck ;  but  he  evidently  had  a  business-like  repugnance  to 
anything  in  the  nature  of  "  over-trading."  Equally  unsuc- 
cessful was  a  second  application  made  at  Manchester  to 
a  "stately  and  opulent  wholesale  dealer  in  cottons,"  who 
thrust  the  prospectus  into  his  pocket  and  turned  his  back 
upon  the  projector,  muttering  that  he  was  "  overrun  with 
these  articles."  This,  however,  was  Coleridge's  last  attempt 
at  canvassing.  His  friends  at  Birmingham  persuaded  him 
to  leave  that  work  to  others,  their  advice  being  no  doubt 
prompted,  in  part  at  least,  by  the  ludicrous  experience  of 
his  qualifications  as  a  canvasser  which  the  following  inci- 
dent furnished  them.  The  same  tradesman  who  had  intro- 
duced him  to  the  patriotic  tallow-chandler  entertained  him 
at  dinner,  and,  after  the  meal,  invited  his  guest  to  smoke  a 
pipe  with  him  and  "  two  or  three  other  illuminati  of  the 
same  rank."  The  invitation  was  at  first  declined,  on  the 
plea  of  an  engagement  to  spend  the  evening  with  a  minis- 
ter and  his  friends,  and  also  because,  writes  Coleridge,  "I 
had  never  smoked  except  once  or  twice  in  my  lifetime,  and 
then  it  was  herb-tobacco  mixed  with  Oronooko."  His  host, 
however,  assured  him  that  the  tobacco  was  equally  mild, 
and  "  seeing,  too,  that  it  was  of  a  yellow  colour,"  he  took 
half  a  pipe  of  it,  "  filling  the  lower  half  of  the  bowl,"  for 
some  unexplained  reason,  "  with  salt."  He  was  soon, 
however,  compelled  to    resign    it  "in   consequence  of  a 


II.]  THE  WATCHMAN.  31 

giddiness,  and  distressful  feeling"  in  bis  eyes,  which,  as 
he  had  drunk  but  a  single  glass  of  ale,  he  knew  must 
have  been  the  effect  of  the  tobacco.  Deeming  himself  re- 
covered after  a  short  interval,  he  sallied  forth  to  fulfil  the 
evening's  engagement;  but  the  symptoms  returned  with 
the  walk  and  the  fresh  air,  and  he  had  scarcely  entered  the 
minister's  drawing-room  and  opened  a  packet  of  letters 
awaiting  him  there  than  he  "  sank  back  on  the  sofa  in  a 
sort  of  swoon  rather  than  sleep."  Fortunately  he  had  had 
time  to  inform  his  new  host  of  the  confused  state  of  his 
feelings  and  of  its  occasion  ;  for  "  here  and  thus  I  lay,"  he 
continues,  "  my  face  like  a  wall  that  is  whitewashing, 
deathly  pale,  and  with  the  cold  drops  of  perspiration  run- 
ning down  it  from  my  forehead ;  while  one  after  another 
there  dropped  in  the  different  gentlemen  who  had  been  in- 
vited to  meet  and  spend  the  evening  with  me,  to  the  num- 
ber of  from  fifteen  to  twenty.  As  the  poison  of  tobacco 
acts  but  for  a  short  time,  I  at  length  awoke  from  insensi- 
bility and  looked  round  on  the  party,  my  eyes  dazzled  by 
the  candles,  which  had  been  lighted  in  the  interim.  By 
way  of  relieving  my  embarrassment  one  of  the  gentlemen 
began  the  conversation  with,  'Have  you  seen  a  paper  to- 
day, Mr.  Coleridge  V  '  Sir,'  I  replied,  rubbing  my  eyes,  '  I 
am  far  from  convinced  that  a  Christian  is  permitted  to 
read  either  newspapers  or  any  other  works  of  merely  po- 
litical and  temporary  interest.'  "  The  incongruity  of  this 
remark,  with  the  purpose  for  which  the  speaker  was  known 
to  have  visited  Birmingham,  and  to  assist  him  in  which 
the  company  had  assembled,  produced,  as  was  natural, 
"an  involuntary  and  general  burst  of  laughter,"  and  the 
party  spent,  we  are  told,  a  most  delightful  evening.  Both 
then  and  afterwards,  however,  they  all  joined  in  dissuading 
the  young  projector  from  proceeding  with  his  scheme,  as- 


32  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

suring  him  "  in  the  most  friendly  and  yet  most  flattering 
expressions"  that  the  employment  was  neither  fit  for  him 
nor  he  for  the  employment.  They  insisted  that  at  any 
rate  "  he  should  make  no  more  applications  in  person,  but 
carry  on  the  canvass  by  proxy,"  a  stipulation  which  we 
may  well  believe  to  have  been  prompted  as  much  by  policy 
as  by  good  nature.  The  same  hospitable  reception,  the 
same  dissuasion,  and,  that  failing,  the  same  kind  exertions 
on  his  behalf,  he  met  with  at  Manchester,  Derby,  Notting- 
ham, and  every  other  place  he  visited ;  and  the  result  of 
his  tour  was  that  he  returned  with  nearly  a  thousand 
names  on  the  subscription  list  of  the  Watchman,  togetlicr 
with  "  something  more  than  a  half  conviction  that  pru- 
dence dictated  the  abandonment  of  the  scheme."  Nothing 
but  this,  however,  was  needed  to  induce  him  to  persevere 
with  it.  To  know  that  a  given  course  of  conduct  was  the 
dictate  of  prudence  was  a  sort  of  presumptive  proof  to 
him  at  this  period  of  life  that  the  contrary  was  the  dictate 
of  duty.  In  due  time,  or  rather  out  of  due  time — for  the 
publication  of  the  first  number  was  delayed  beyond  the 
day  announced  for  it — the  Watchinan  appeared.  Its  ca- 
reer was  brief  —  briefer,  indeed,  than  it  need  have  been. 
A  naturally  short  life  was  suicidally  shortened.  In  the 
second  number,  records  Coleridge,  with  delightful  naivete, 
"an  essay  against  fast-days,  with  a  most  censurable  appli- 
cation of  a  text  from  Isaiah'  for  its  motto,  lost  me  near 
five  hundred  subscribers  at  one  blow."  In  the  two  follow- 
ing numbers  he  made  enemies  of  all  his  Jacobin  and  dem- 
ocratic patrons  by  playing  Balaam  to  the  legislation  of 
the  Government,  and  pronouncing  something  almost  like 
a  blessing  on  the  "gagging  bills" — measures  he  declared 

'  "  WliM'eforc  iny  bowolrf  sliiill  ?ouiul  like  an  liarp." — Ts  xvi.  11. 


II.]  TUE  WATCHMAN.  33 

which,  "  whatever  the  motive  of  their  introduction,  would 
produce  an  effect  to  be  desired  by  all  true  friends  of  free- 
dom, as  far  as  they  should  contribute  to  deter  men  from 
openly  declaiming  on  subjects  the  principles  of  which  they 
had  never  bottomed,  and  from  pleading  to  the  poor  and 
ignorant  instead  of  pleading  for  them."  Aj  the  same 
time  the  editor  of  the  Watchman  avowed  his  conviction 
that  national  education  and  a  concurring  spread  of  the 
Gospel  were  the  indispensable  conditions  of  any  true  po- 
litical amelioration.  We  can  hardly  wonder  on  the  whole 
that  by  the  time  the  seventh  number  was  published  its  pred- 
ecessors were  being  "  exposed  in  sundry  old  iron  shops  at 
a  penny  a  piece." 

And  yet,  like  everything  Avhich  came  from  Coleridge's 
hand,  this  immature  and  unpractical  production  has  an 
interest  of  its  own.  Amid  the  curious  mixture  of  actuali- 
ty and  abstract  disquisition  of  which  each  number  of  the 
Watchman  is  made  up,  we  are  arrested  again  and  again  by 
some  striking  metaphor  or  some  weighty  sentence  which 
tells  us  that  the  writer  is  no  mere  wordy  wicldcr  of  a  facile 
pen.  The  paper  on  the  slave  trade  in  the  seventh  number 
is  a  vigorous  and,  in  places,  a  heart-stirring  appeal  to  the 
humane  emotions.  There  are  passages  in  it  which  fore- 
shadow Coleridge's  more  mature  literary  manner  —  the 
•  manner  of  the  great  pulpit  orators  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury— in  a  very  interesting  way.*     But  what  was  the  use 

'  Take  for  instance  this  sentence :  "  Our  own  sorrows,  like  the 
Princes  of  Hell  in  Milton's  Pandemonium,  sit  enthroned  'bulky  and 
vast;'  while  the  miseries  of  our  fellow-creatures  dwindle  into  pigmy 
forms,  and  are  crowded  in  an  innumerable  multitude  into  some  dark 
corner  of  the  heart."  Both  in  character  of  imagery  and  in  form  of 
structure  we  have  here  tlic  germ  of  such  passages  as  this,  which  one 
might  confidently  defy  the  most  accomplished  literary  "  taster  "  to 


34  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

of  No.  IV,  containing  an  effective  article  like  this  when 
No.  III.  had  opened  with  an  "  Historical  Sketch  of  the 
Mannei's  and  Religion  of  the  Ancient  Germans,  introduc- 
tory to  a  sketch  of  the  Manners,  Religion,  and  Politics  of 
present  Germany  ?"  This  to  a  public  who  wanted  to  read 
about  Napoleon  and  Mr.  Pitt !  No.  III.  in  all  probability 
"choked  off"  a  good  proportion  of  the  commonplace 
readers  who  might  have  been  well  content  to  have  put  up 
with  the  humanitarian  rhetoric  of  No.  IV.,  if  only  for  its 
connection  with  so  unquestionably  an  actuality  as  West 
Indian  sugar.  It  was,  anyhow,  owing  to  successive  aliena- 
tions of  this  kind  that  on  13th  May,  1796,  the  editor  of 
the  Watchman  was  compelled  to  bid  farewell  to  his  few 
remaining  readers  in  the  tenth  number  of  his  periodical, 
for  the  "  short  and  satisfactory "  reason  that  "  the  work 
does  not  pay  its  expenses."  "  Part  of  my  readers,"  con- 
tinues Coleridge,  "  relinquished  it  because  it  did  not  con- 
tain sufficient  original  composition,  and  a  still  larger  part 
because  it  contained  too  much  ;"  and  he  then  proceeds 
with  that  half-humorous  simplicity  of  his  to  explain  what 
excellent  reasons  there  were  why  the  first  of  these  classes 
sliould  transfer  their  patronage  to  Flower's  Cambridge  In- 
telligencer, and  the  second  theirs  to  the  New  Monthly 
Magazine. 

It  is  not,  however,  for  the  biographer  or  the  world  to 
regret  the  short  career  of  the  Watchman,  since  its  decease 
left  Coleridge's  mind  in  undivided  allegiance  to  the  poetic 
impulse  at  what  was  destined  to  be  the  period  of  its  great- 
distinguish  from  Jeremy  Taylor:  "  Or  like  two  rapid  streams  that  at 
their  first  meeting  within  narrow  and  rocky  banks  mutually  strive  to 
repel  each  other,  and  intermix  reluctantly  and  in  tumult,  but  soon 
finding  a  wider  channel  and  more  yielding  shores,  blend  and  dilate 
and  flow  on  in  one  current  and  with  one  voice." — Biog.  Lit.  p.  155. 


II.]  RETIREMENT  TO  STOWEY.  35 

est  power.  In  the  meantime  one  result  of  the  episode  had 
been  to  make  a  not  unimportant  addition  to  his  friend- 
ships. Mention  has  already  been  made  of  his  somewhat 
earlier  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Thomas  Poole,  of  Nether 
Stowey,  a  man  of  high  intellio-ence  and  mark  in  his  time ; 
and  it  was  in  the  course  of  his  northern  peregrinations  in 
search  of  subscribers  that  he  met  with  Charles  Lloyd. 
This  young  man,  the  son  of  an  eminent  Birmingham 
banker,  was  so  struck  with  Coleridge's  genius  and  elo- 
quence as  to  conceive  an  "  ardent  desire  to  domesticate 
himself  permanently  with  a  man  whose  conversation  was 
to  him  as  a  revelation  from  heaven  ;"  and  shortly  after  the 
decease  of  the  Watchman  he  obtained  his  parents'  consent 
to  the  arrangement. 

Early,  therefore,  in  the  year  1797  Coleridge,  accom- 
panied by  Charles  Lloyd,  removed  to  Nether  Stowey  in 
Somersetshire,  where  he  occupied  a  cottage  placed  at  his 
disposal  by  Mr.  Poole.  His  first  employment  in  his  new 
abode  appears  to  have  been  the  preparation  of  the  second 
edition  of  his  poems.  In  the  new  issue  nineteen  pieces  of 
the  former  publication  were  discarded  and  twelve  new 
ones  added,  the  most  important  of  which  was  the  Ode  to 
the  Dejjartiuff  Year,  which  had  first  appeared  in  the  Cam- 
bridge Intelligencer,  and  had  been  immediately  afterwards 
republished  in  a  separate  form  as  a  thin  quarto  pamphlet, 
together  with  some  lines  of  no  special  merit  "  addressed 
to  a  young  man  of  fortune"  (probably  Charles  Lloyd), 
"  who  abandoned  himself  to  an  indolent  and  causeless 
melancholy."  To  the  new  edition  were  added  the  preface 
already  quoted  from,  and  a  prose  introduction  to  the  son- 
nets. The  volume  also  contained  some  poems  by  Charles 
Lloyd  and  an  enlarged  collection  of  sonnets  and  other 
pieces  by  Charles  Lamb,  the  latter  of  w-hom  about  the 


36  COLERIDGE.  [chap.  ii. 

time  of  its  publication  paid  bis  first  visit  to  tbe  friend 
witb  ■wbom,  ever  since  leaving  Cbrist's  Hospital,  be  bad 
kept  up  a  constant  and,  to  tbe  student  of  literature,  a  most 
interesting  correspondence.*  In  June,  lV97,  Charles  and 
Mary  Lamb  arrived  at  tbe  Stowey  cottage  to  find  tbeir 
host  disabled  by  an  accident  which  prevented  him  from 
walking  during  their  whole  stay.  It  was  during  their 
absence  on  a  walking  expedition  that  he  composed  tbe 
pleasing  lines, 

"  The  lime-tree  bower  my  prison," 

in  which  he  thrice  applies  to  bis  friend  that  epithet  which 
gave  such  humorous  annoyance  to  the  gentle -hearted 
Charles." ' 

But  a  greater  than  Lamb,  if  one  may  so  speak  without 
offence  to  tbe  votaries  of  that  rare  humorist  and  exquisite 
critic,  had  already  made  his  appearance  on  the  scene. 
Some  time  before  this  visit  of  Lamb's  to  Stowey  Cole- 
ridge had  made  tbe  acquaintance  of  tbe  remarkable  man 
who  was  destined  to  influence  his  literary  career  in  many 
ways  importantly,  and  in  one  way  decisively.  It  was  in 
tbe  month  of  June,  1797,  and  at  tbe  village  of  Racedown 
in  Dorsetshire,  that  he  fir.st  met  William  Wordsworth. 

'  Perhaps  a  "  correspondence  "  of  which  only  one  side  exists  may 
be  hardly  thought  to  deserve  that  name.  Lamb's  letters  to  Coleridge 
are  full  of  valuable  criticism  on  their  respective  poetical  efforts.  Un- 
fortunately in,  it  is  somewhat  strangely  said,  "  a  fit  of  dejection,"  he 
destroyed  all  Coleridge's  letters  to  him. 

'  Lamb's  Correspondence  with  Coleridge,  Letter  XXXVIL 


M^ 


CHAPTER  III. 

COLERIDGE  AND  WORDSWORTn. —PUBLICATION  OF  THE  "LYRI- 
CAL BALLADS."  —  THE  "ANCIENT  MARINER."  —  THE  FIRST 
PART  OF  "CIIRISTABEL." — DECLINE  OF  COLERIDGE'S  POETIC 
UIPULSE. — FINAL  REVIEW  OF  HIS  POETRY. 

[1797-1799.] 

The  years  1797  and  1798  are  generally  and  justly  regarded 
as  the  blossoming -time  of  Coleridge's  poetic  genius.  It 
would  be  scarcely  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  they  were 
even  more  than  this,  and  that  within  the  brief  period  cov- 
ered by  them  is  included  not  only  the  development  of  the 
poet's  powers  to  their  full  maturity  but  the  untimely  be- 
ginnings of  their  decline.  For  to  pass  from  the  poems 
written  by  Coleridge  within  these  two  years  to  those  of 
later  origin  is  like  passing  from  among  the  green  wealth 
of  summer  foliage  into  the  well-nigh  naked  woods  of  later 
autumn.  During  1797  and  1798  the  Ancient  Mari7ier,  the 
first  part  of  Christabel,  the  fine  ode  to  France,  the  Fears 
in  Solitude,  the  beautiful  lines  entitled  Frost  at  Mid- 
niffhtjihc  Nightingale,  the  Circassian  Love-Chant,  the  piece 
known  as  Love,  from  the  poem  of  the  Dark  Ladie,  and 
that  strange  fragment  Kubla  Khan,  were  all  of  them  writ- 
ten and  nearly  all  of  them  published ;  while  betw  een  the 
last  composed  of  these  and  that  swan-song  of  his  dying 
Muse,  the  Dejection,  of  1802,  there  is  but  one  piece  to  be 
added  to  the  list  of  his  greater  works.    This,  therefore,  the 


38  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

second  part  of  Christahel  (1800),  may  almost  be  described 
by  the  picturesque  image  in  the  first  part  of  the  same 
poera  as 

"  The  one  red  leaf,  the  last  of  its  clan, 
Hanging  so  light  and  hanging  so  high, 
On  the  topmost  twig  that  looks  up  at  the  sky." 

The  first  to  fail  him  of  his  sources  of  inspiration  was  . 
his  revolutionary  enthusiasm ;  and  the  ode  to  France — 
the  Recantation,  as  it  was  styled  on  its  first  appearance 
in  the  Morning  Post — is  the  recoi'd  of  a  reaction  which, 
as  has  been  said,  was  as  much  speedier  in  Coleridge's  case 
than  in  that  of  the  other  ardent  young  minds  which  had 
come  under  the  spell  of  the  Revolution  as  his  enthusiasm 
had  been  more  passionate  than  theirs.  In  the  winter  of 
1797-98  the  Directory  had  plunged  France  into  an  un- 
natural conflict  with  her  sister  Republic  of  Switzerland, 
and  Coleridge,  who  could  pardon  and  had  pardoned  her 
fierce  animosity  against  a  country  which  he  considered  not 
so  much  his  own  as  Pitt's,  was  unable  to  forgive  her  this. 
In  the  Recantation  he  casts  her  off  forever ;  he  perceives 
at  last  that  true  liberty  is  not  to  be  obtained  through  po- 
litical, but  only  through  spiritual  emancipation  ;  that — 

"  The  sensual  and  the  dark  rebel  in  vain, 
Slaves  by  tlieir  own  compulsion  !     In  mad  game 
They  burst  their  manacles,  and  wear  the  name 
Of  Freedom  graven  on  a  heavier  chain  ;" 

and  arrives  in  a  noble  peroration  at  the  somewhat  unsatis- 
factory conclusion  that  the  spirit  of  liberty,  "  the  guide 
of  homeless  winds  and  playmate  of  the  waves,"  is  to  be 
found  only  among  the  elements,  and  not  in  the  institu- 
tions of  man.     And  in  the  same  quaintly  ingenuous  spirit 


III.]  COLERIDGE  AND  WORDSWORTH.  39 

which  half  touches  and  half  amuses  us  in  his  earlier  poems 
he  lets  us  perceive,  a  few  weeks  later,  in  his  Fears  in  Soli- 
tude, that  sympathy  with  a  foreign  nation  threatened  by 
the  invader  may  gradually  develop  into  an  almost  filial 
regard  for  one's  own  similarly  situated  land.  He  has  been 
deemed,  he  says,  an  enemy  of  his  country. 

"  But,  0  dear  J?''itain  !     0  my  mother  Isle," 

once,  it  may  be  remembered,  "doomed  to  fall  enslaved  and 
vile,"  but  now — 

"Needs  must  thou  prove  a  name  most  dear  and  holy, 
To  me  a  son,  a  brother,  and  a  friend, 
A  husband  and  a  father !  who  revere 
All  bonds  of  natural  love,  and  find  them  all 
Within  the  limits  of  thy  rocky  shores." 

After  all,  it  has  occurred  to  him,  England  is  not  only  the 
England  of  Pitt  and  Grenville,  and  in  that  capacity  the 
fitting  prey  of  the  insulted  French  Republic:  she  is  also 
the  England  of  Sara  Coleridge,  and  little  Hartley,  and  of 
Mr.  Thomas  Poole,  of  Nether  Stowcy.  And  so,  to  be  sure, 
she  was  in  1796  when  her  downfall  was  predicted,  and  in 
the  spirit  rather  of  the  Old  Testament  than  of  the  New. 
But  there  is  something  very  engaging  in  the  candour  with 
which  the  young  poet  hastens  to  apprise  us  of  this  his 
first  awakening  to  the  fact. 

France  may  be  regarded  as  the  last  ode,  and  Fears  in 
/Solitude  as  the  last  blank-verse  poem  of  any  importance, 
that  owe  their  origin  to  Coleridge's  early  political  senti- 
ments. Henceforth,  and  for  the  too  brief  period  of  his 
poetic  activity,  he  was  to  derive  his  inspiration  from  othei 
sources.  The  most  fruitful  and  important  of  these  was 
unquestionably  his  intercourse  with  Wordsworth,  from 
D       3 


40  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

whom,  although  there  was  doubtless  a  reciprocation  of  in- 
fluence between  thera,  his  much  more  receptive  nature  took 
a  far  deeper  impression  than  it  made.'  At  the  time  of 
their  meeting  he  had  already  for  some  three  years  been 
acquainted  with  Wordsworth's  works  as  a  poet,  and  it 
speaks  highly  for  his  discrimination  that  he  was  able  to 
discern  the  great  powers  of  his  future  friend,  even  in  work 
so  immature  in  many  respects  as  the  Descr'qjiive  Sketches. 
It  was  during  the  last  year  of  his  residence  at  Cambridge 
that  he  first  met  with  these  poems,  of  which  he  says  in 
the  Biographia  Literaria  that  "  seldom,  if  ever,  was  the 
emergence  of  an  original  poetic  genius  above  the  literary 
horizon  more  evidently  announced ;"  and  the  effect  pro- 
duced by  this  volume  was  steadily  enhanced  by  further 
acquaintance  both  with  the  poet  and  his  works.  Nothing, 
indeed,  is  so  honourably  noticeable  and  even  touching  in 
Coleridge's  relation  to  his  friend  as  the  tone  of  reverence 
with  which,  even  in  the  days  of  his  highest  self-confidence 
and  even  almost  haughty  belief  in  the  greatness  of  his 
own  poetic  mission,  he  was  accustomed  to  speak  of  Words- 

'  Perhaps  the  deepest  impress  of  the  Wordsworthian  influence  is 
to  be  found  in  the  little  poem  Frost  at  Midnight,  with  its  affecting 
apostrophe  to  the  sleeping  infant  at  his  side — infant  destined  to  de- 
velop as  wayward  a  genius  and  to  lead  as  restless  and  irresolute  a 
life  as  his  father.     Its  closing  lines — 

"  Therefore  all  seasons  shall  be  sweet  to  thee 
Whether  the  summer  clothe  the  general  earth 
With  greenness  .  .  . 
.  .  .  whether  the  eave-drops  fall, 
Heard  only  in  the  trances  of  the  blast, 
Or  if  the  secret  ministry  of  frost 
Shall  hang  them  up  in  silent  icicles 
Quietly  shining  to  the  ([uiet  moon  " — 

might  have  flowed  stniiglit  from  the  pen  of  Wordsworth  himself. 


III.]  COLERIDGE  AND  WORDSWORTH.  41 

worth.  A  witness,  to  be  more  fully  cited  hereafter,  and 
whose  testimony  is  especially  valuable  as  that  of  one  who 
was  by  no  means  blind  to  Coleridge's  early  foible  of  self- 
complacency,  has  testified  to  this  unbounded  admiration 
of  his  brother  -  poet.  "When,"  records  this  gentleman, 
"  we  have  sometimes  spoken  complimentarily  to  Coleridge 
of  himself  he  has  said  that  he  was  nothing  in  comparison 
with  Wordsworth."  And  two  years  before  this,  at  a  time 
when  they  had  not  yet  tested  each  other's  power  in  liter- 
ary collaboration,  he  had  written  to  Cottle  to  inform  him 
of  his  introduction  to  the  author  of  "  near  twelve  hundred 
lines  of  blank-verse,  superior,  I  dare  aver,  to  anything  in 
our  language  which  in  any  way  resembles  it,"  and  bad 
declared  with  evident  sincerity  that  he  felt  *'  a  little  man  " 
by  Wordsworth's  side. 

His  own  impression  upon  his  new  friend  was  more 
distinctively  personal  in  its  origin.  It  was  by  Coleridge's 
total  individuality,  by  the  sum  of  his  vast  and  varied  in- 
tellectual powers,  rather  than  by  the  specific  poetic  ele- 
ment contained  in  them,  that  Wordsworth,  like  the  rest 
of  the  world,  indeed,  was  in  the  main  attracted ;  but  it  is 
clear  enough  that  this  attraction  was  from  the  first  most 
powerful.  On  that  point  we  have  not  only  the  weighty 
testimony  of  Dorothy  Wordsworth,  as  conveyed  in  her 
often-quoted  description'  of  her  brother's  new   acquaint- 

'  "You  had  a  great  loss  in  not  seeing  Coleridge.  He  is  a  won- 
derful raan.  His  conversalion  teems  with  soul,  mind,  and  spirit. 
Then  he  is  so  benevolent,  so  good  tempered  and  cheerful,  and,  like 
William,  interests  himself  so  much  about  every  little  trifle.  At  first 
I  thought  him  very  plain — that  is,  for  about  three  minutes ;  he  is 
pale,  thin,  has  a  wide  mouth,  thick  lips,  and  not  very  good  teeth, 
longish  loose  -  growing  half-curling  rough  black  hair.  But  if  you 
hear  him  speak  for  five  minutes  you  think  no  more  of  them.  His 
eye  is  large  and  full,  and  not  very  dark  but  gray,  such  an  eye  as 


42  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

ance,  but  the  still  more  conclusive  evidence  of  her  brother's 
own  acts.  He  gave  the  best  possible  proof  of  the  fasci- 
nation which  had  been  exercised  over  him  by  quitting 
Racedown  with  his  sister  for  Alfoxden  near  Nether  Stowey 
within  a  few  weeks  of  his  first  introduction  to  Coleridge, 
a  change  of  abode  for  which,  as  Miss  Wordsworth  has 
expressly  recorded,  "our  principal  inducement  was  Cole- 
ridge's society." 

By  a  curious  coincidence  the  two  poets  were  at  this 
time  simultaneously  sickening  for  what  may  perhaps  be 
appropriately  called  the  "poetic  measles."  They  were 
each  engaged  in  the  composition  of  a  five-act  tragedy,  and 
read  scenes  to  each  other,  and  to  each  other's  admiration, 
from  their  respective  dramas.  Neither  play  was  fortunate 
in  its  immediate  destiny.  Wordsworth's  tragedy,  the  Bor- 
derers, was  greatly  commended  by  London  critics  and  de- 
cisively rejected  by  the  management  of  Covent  Garden. 
As  for  Coleridge,  the  negligent  Sheridan  did  not  even  con- 
descend to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  his  manuscript; 
his  play  was  passed  from  hand  to  hand  among  the  Drury 
Lane  Committee ;  but  not  till  many  years  afterwards  did 
Osorio  find  its  way  under  another  name  to  the  footlights. 

For  the  next  twelvemonth  the  intercourse  between  the 
two  poets  was  close  and  constant,  and  most  fruitful  in  re- 
sults of  high  moment  to  English  literature.  It  was  in  their 
daily  rambles  among  the  Quantock  Hills  that  they  excogi- 
tated that  twofold  theory  of  the  essence  and  functions  of 
poetry  which  was  to  receive  such  notable  illustration  in 
their  joint  volume  of  verse,  the  Lyrical  Ballads ;  it  was 

would  receive  from  a  heavy  soul  the  dullest  expression ;  but  it  speaks 
every  emotion  of  his  animated  mind :  it  has  more  of  the  poet's  eye 
in  a  fine  frenzy  rolling  than  I  ever  witnessed.  He  has  fine  dark  eye- 
brows and  an  overhanging  forehead." 


in.]  "LYRICAL  BALLADS."  43 

during  a  walk  over  the  Qnantock  Hills  that  by  far  the  most 
famous  poem  of  that  series,  the  Ancient  Mariner,  was  con- 
ceived and  in  part  composed.  The  publication  of  the  Lyr- 
ical Ballads  in  the  spring  of  the  year  179S  was,  indeed,  an 
event  of  double  significance  for  English  poetry.  It  marked 
an  epoch  in  the  creative  life  of  Coleridge,  and  a  no  less  im- 
portant one  in  the  critical  life  of  Wordsworth.  In  the  Bio- 
(jraphia  Literaria  the  origination  of  the  plan  of  the  work 
is  thus  described: 

"  During  the  first  year  that  Mr.  Wordsworth  and  I  were  neigh- 
bours our  conversation  turned  frequently  on  the  two  cardinal  points 
of  poetry,  the  power  of  exciting  the  sympathy  of  the  reader  by  a 
faithful  adherence  to  the  truth  of  natui'C,  and  the  power  of  giving 
the  interest  of  novelty  by  the  modifying  colours  of  the  imagination. 
The  sudden  charm  which  accidents  of  light  and  shade,  which  moon- 
light or  sunset  diffused  over  a  known  and  familiar  landscape,  appeared 
to  represent  the  practicability  of  combining  both.  These  are  the 
poetry  of  nature.  The  thought  suggested  itself  (to  which  of  us  I  do 
not  recollect)  that  a  series  of  poems  might  be  composed  of  two  soils. 
In  the  one  the  incidents  and  agents  were  to  be,  in  part  at  least,  su- 
pernatural ;  and  the  interest  aimed  at  was  to  consist  in  the  interest- 
ing of  the  affections  by  the  dramatic  truth  of  such  emotions  as  would 
naturally  accompany  such  situations,  supposing  them  real.  .  .  .  For 
the  second  class,  subjects  were  to  be  chosen  from  ordinary  life  ;  the 
characters  and  incidents  were  to  be  such  as  will  be  found  in  every 
village  and  its  vicinity  where  there  is  a  meditative  and  feeling  mind 
to  seek  after  them,  or  to  notice  them  when  they  present  themselves. 
In  this  idea  originated  the  plan  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads,  in  which  it 
\vas  agreed  that  my  endeavours  should  be  directed  to  persons  and 
characters  supernatural,  or  at  least  romantic,  yet  so  as  to  transfer 
from  our  inward  nature  a  human  interest  and  a  semblance  of  truth 
sufficient  to  procure  for  these  shadows  of  imagination  that  willing 
suspension  of  disbelief  for  the  moment  which  constitutes  poetic  faith. 
Mr.  Wordsworth,  on  the  other  hand,  was  to  propose  to  himself,  as 
his  object,  to  give  the  charm  of  novelty  to  things  of  everyday,  and 
to  excite  a  feeling  analogous  to  the  supernatural  by  awakening  the 


44  COLERIDGE.  •  [chap. 

mind's  attention  from  the  lethargy  of  custom  and  directing  it  to  the 
loveliness  and  the  wonders  of  the  world  before  us ;  an  inexhaustible 
treasure,  but  for  which,  in  consequence  of  the  film  of  familiarity  and 
selfish  solicitude,  we  have  eyes  which  see  not,  ears  that  hear  not,  and 
hearts  which  neither  feel  nor  understand." 

We  may  measure  the  extent  to  which  the  poetic  teach- 
ing and  practice  of  Wordsworth  have  influenced  subse- 
quent taste  and  criticism  by  noting  how  completely  the 
latter  of  these  two  functions  of  poetry  has  overshadowed 
the  former.  To  lend  the  charm  of  imagination  to  the  real 
will  appear  to  many  people  to  be  not  one  function  of  poe- 
try merely  but  its  very  essence.  To  them  it  is  poetry,  and 
tlie  only  thing  worthy  of  the  name ;  while  the  correlative 
function  of  lending  the  force  of  reality  to  the  imaginary 
will  appear  at  best  but  a  superior  kind  of  metrical  romanc- 
ing, or  clever  telling  of  fairy  tales.  Nor  of  course  can  there, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  highest  conception  of  the 
poet's  office,  be  any  comparison  between  the  two.  In  so 
far  as  we  regard  poetry  as  contributing  not  merely  to  the 
pleasure  of  the  mind  but  to  its  health  and  strength — in  so 
far  as  we  regard  it  in  its  capacity  not  only  to  delight  but 
to  sustain,  console,  and  tranquillise  the  human  spirit — there 
is,  of  course,  as  much  difference  between  the  idealistic  and 
the  realistic  forms  of  poetry  as  there  is  between  a  narcotic 
potion  and  a  healing  drug.  The  one,  at  best,  can  only  en- 
able a  man  to  forget  his  burdens ;  the  other  fortifies  him 
to  endure  them.  It  is  perhaps  no  more  than  was  naturally 
to  be  expected  of  our  brooding  and  melancholy  age,  that 
poetry  (when  it  is  not  a  mere  voluptuous  record  of  the  sub- 
jective impressions  of  sense)  should  have  become  almost 
limited  in  its  very  meaning  to  the  exposition  of  the  imag- 
inative or  spiritual  aspect  of  the  world  of  realities ;  but  so 
it  is  now,  and  so  in  Coleridge's  time  it  clearly  was  not. 


m.]  "LYRICAL  BALLADS."  45 

Coleridge,  in  the  passage  above  quoted,  shows  no  signs  of 
regarding  one  of  the  two  functions  which  he  attributes  to 
poetry  as  any  more  accidental  or  occasional  than  the  other; 
and  the  fact  that  the  realistic  portion  of  the  Lyrical  Bal- 
lads so  far  exceeded  in  amount  its  supernatural  element, 
he  attributes  not  to  any  inherent  supremacy  in  the  claims 
of  the  former  to  attention  but  simply  to  the  greater  indus- 
try which  Wordsworth  had  displayed  in  his  special  de- 
partment of  the  volume.  For  his  own  part,  he  says,  "  I 
wrote  the  Ancient  Mariner,  and  was  preparing,  among 
other  poems,  the  Dark  Ladie  and  the  Christabel,  in  which 
I  should  liave  more  nearly  realised  my  ideal  than  I  had 
done  in  my  first  attempt.  But  Mr.  Wordsworth's  indus- 
try had  proved  so  much  more  successful,  and  the  number 
of  the  poems  so  much  greater,  that  my  compositions,  in- 
stead of  forming  a  balance,  appeared  rather  an  interpo- 
lation of  heterogeneous  matter."  There  was  certainly  a 
considerable  disparity  between  the  amount  of  their  respec- 
tive contributions  to  the  volume,  which,  in  fact,  contained 
nineteen  pieces  by  Wordsworth  and  only  four  by  Cole- 
ridge. Practically,  indeed,  we  may  reduce  this  four  to  one ; 
for,  of  the  three  others,  the  two  scenes  from  Osorio  are 
without  special  distinction,  and  the  Ni(jhtingale,  though  a 
graceful  poem,  and  containing  an  admirably- studied  de- 
scription of  the  bird's  note,  is  too  slight  and  short  to  claim 
any  importance  in  the  series.  But  the  one  long  poem  which 
Coleridge  contributed  to  the  collection  is  alone  sufficient 
to  associate  it  forever  with  his  name.  JJnum  sed  leonem. 
To  any  one  who  should  have  taunted  him  with  the  compar- 
ative infertility  of  his  Muse  he  might  well  have  returned 
the  haughty  answer  of  the  lioness  in  the  fable,  when  he 
could  point  in  justification  of  it  to  i]x(i  Rime  of  the  Ancient 
Mariner. 


46  COLERIDGE.  [ciup. 

There  is,  I  may  assume,  no  need  at  the  present  day  to 
discuss  the  true  place  in  English  literature  of  this  unique 
product  of  the  human  imagination.  One  is  bound,  how- 
ever, to  attempt  to  correlate  and  adjust  it  to  the  rest  of  the 
poet's  work,  and  this,  it  must  be  admitted,  is  a  most  diffi- 
cult piece  of  business.  Never  was  there  a  poem  so  irritating 
to  a  critic  of  the  "  pigeon-holing  "  variety.  It  simply  defies 
him ;  and  yet  the  instinct  which  he  obeys  is  so  excusable, 
because  in  fact  so  universal,  that  one  feels  guilty  of  some- 
thing like  disloyalty  to  the  very  principles  of  order  in  smil- 
ing at  his  disappointment.  Complete  and  symmetrical  clas- 
sification is  so  fascinating  an  amusement ;  it  would  simplify 
so  many  subjects  of  study  if  men  and  things  would  only 
consent  to  rank  themselves  under  different  categories  and 
remain  there ;  it  would,  in  particular,  be  so  inexpressibly 
convenient  to  be  able  to  lay  your  hand  upon  your  poet 
whenever  you  wanted  him  by  merely  turning  to  a  shelf 
labelled  "Realistic"  or  "Imaginative"  (nay,  perhaps,  to 
the  still  greater  saving  of  labour  —  Objective  or  Subjec- 
tive), that  we  cannot  be  surprised  at  the  strength  of  the 
aforesaid  instinct  in  many  a  critical  mind.  Nor  should  it 
be  hard  to  realise  its  revolt  against  those  single  exceptions 
which  bring  its  generalisations  to  nought.  When  the 
pigeon-hole  will  admit  every  "document"  but  one,  the 
case  is  hard  indeed ;  and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
the  Ancient  Mariner  is  the  one  document  which  the  pigeon- 
hole in  this  instance  declines  to  admit.  If  Coleridge  had 
only  refrained  from  writing  this  remarkable  poem,  or  if, 
having  done  so,  he  had  written  more  poems  like  it,  the 
critic  might  have  ticketed  him  with  a  quiet  mind,  and 
gone  on  his  way  complacent.  As  it  is,  however,  the  poet 
has  contrived,  in  virtue  of  this  performance,  not  only  to 
defeat  classification  but  to  defy  it.     For  the  weird  ballad 


HI.]  THE  "ANCIENT  MARINER."  47 

abounds  in  those  very  qualities  in  which  Coleridge's  poetry 
with  all  its  merits  is  most  conspicuously  deficient,  while  on 
the  other  hand  it  is  w^holly  free  from  the  faults  with  which 
he  is  most  frequently  and  justly  chargeable.  One  would 
not  have  said  in  the  first  place  that  the  author  of  Religious 
Musings,  still  less  of  the  Monody  on  the  Death  of  Chatter- 
ton,  was  by  any  means  the  man  to  have  compassed  tri- 
umphantly at  the  very  first  attempt  the  terseness,  vigour, 
and  naivete  of  the  true  ballad- manner.  To  attain  this, 
Coleridge,  the  student  of  his  early  verse  must  feel,  would 
have  rather  more  to  retrench  and  much  more  to  restrain 
than  might  be  the  case  with  many  other  youthful  poets. 
The  exuberance  of  immaturity,  the  want  of  measure,  the 
"  not  knowing  where  to  stop,"  are  certainly  even  more 
conspicuous  in  the  poems  of  1V96  than  they  are  in  most 
productions  of  the  same  stage  of  poetic  development;  and 
these  qualities,  it  is  needless  to  say,  require  very  stern  chast- 
ening from  him  who  would  succeed  in  the  style  which  Cole- 
ridge attempted  for  the  first  time  in  the  Ancient  Mariner. 

The  circumstances  of  this  iminortal  ballad's  birth  have 
been  related  with  such  fulness  of  detail  by  Wordsworth, 
and  Coleridge's  own  references  to  them  are  so  completely 
reconcilable  with  that  account,  that  it  must  have  required 
all  De  Quincey's  consummate  ingenuity  as  a  mischief- 
maker  to  detect  any  discrepancy  between  the  two. 

In  the  autumn  of  1V97,  records  Wordsworth  in  the  MS. 
notes  which  he  left  behind  him,  "  Mr.  Coleridge,  my  sister, 
and  myself  started  from  Alfoxden  pretty  late  in  the  after- 
noon with  a  view  to  visit  Linton  and  the  Valley  of  Stones 
near  to  it;  and  as  our  united  funds  were  very  small,  we 
agreed  to  defray  the  expense  of  the  tour  by  writing  a 
poem  to  be  sent  to  the  New  Monthly  Magazine.  Accord- 
ingly we  set  off,  and  proceeded  along  the  Quantock  Hills 
3* 


48  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

towards  Watchet;  and  in  the  course  of  this  walk  was 
planned  the  poem  of  the  Ancient  Mariner,  founded  on  a 
dream,  as  Mr.  Coleridge  said,  of  his  friend  Mr.  Cruikshanlc. 
Much  the  greatest  part  of  the  story  was  Mr.  Coleridge's  in- 
vention, but  certain  parts  I  suggested ;  for  example,  some 
crime  was  to  be  committed  which  should  bring  upon  the 
Old  Navigator,  as  Coleridge  afterwards  delighted  to  call  him, 
the  spectral  persecution,  as  a  consequence  of  that  crime 
and  his  own  wanderings.  I  had  been  reading  in  Shel- 
vocke's  Voyages,  a  day  or  two  before,  that  while  doubling- 
Cape  Horn  they  frequently  saw  albatrosses  in  that  latitude, 
the  largest  sort  of  sea -fowl,  some  extending  their  wings 
twelve  or  thirteen  feet.  'Suppose,'  said  I,  'you  represent 
him  as  having  killed  one  of  these  birds  on  entering  the 
South  Sea,  and  that  the  tutelary  spirits  of  these  regions 
take  upon  them  to  avenge  the  crime,'  The  incident  was 
thought  fit  for  the  purpose,  and  adopted  accordingly.  I 
also  suggested  the  navigation  of  the  ship  by  the  dead  men, 
but  do  not  recollect  that  I  had  anything  more  to  do  with 
the  scheme  of  the  poem.  The  gloss  with  which  it  was 
subsequently  accompanied  was  not  thought  of  by  either  of 
us  at  the  time,  at  least  not  a  hint  of  it  was  given  to  me, 
and  I  have  no  doubt  it  was  a  gratuitous  afterthought. 
We  began  the  composition  together  on  that  to  me  memo- 
rable evening.  I  furnished  two  or  three  lines  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  poem,  in  particular — 

'And  listened  like  a  three  years'  child : 
The  Mariner  had  his  will.' 

These  trifling  contributions,  all  but  one,  which  Mr.  C.  has 
with  unnecessary  scrupulosity  recorded,*  slipped  out  of  bis 

'  The  lines — 

"  And  it  is  long,  and  lank,  and  brown, 
As  is  the  ribbed  sea-sand." 


m.]  THE  "ANCIENT  MARINER."  49 

mind,  as  well  tliey  might.  As  we  endeavoured  to  proceed 
conjointly  (I  speak  of  tlie  same  evening)  our  respective 
.manners  proved  so  widely  different  that  it  would  have  been 
quite  presumptuous  in  me  to  do  anything  but  separate 
from  an  undertaking  upon  which  I  could  only  have  been 
a  clog.  .  .  .  The  Ancient  Mariner  grew  and  grew  till  it  be- 
came too  important  for  our  first  object,  which  was  limited 
to  our  expectation  of  five  pounds ;  and  we  began  to  think 
of  a  volume  which  was  to  consist,  as  Mr.  Coleridge  has 
told  the  world,  of  poems  chiefly  on  supernatural  subjects." 
Except  that  the  volume  ultimately  determined  on  was  to 
consist  only  "  partly  "  and  not  "  chiefly  "  of  poems  on  su- 
pernatural subjects  (in  the  result,  as  has  been  seen,  it  con- 
sisted "  chiefly  "  of  poems  upon  natural  subjects),  there  is 
nothing  in  this  account  which  cannot  be  easily  reconciled 
with  the  probable  facts  upon  which  De  Quincey  bases  his 
hinted  charge  against  Coleridge  in  his  Lake  Poets.  It  was 
not  Coleridge  who  had  been  reading  Shelvocke's  Voyages, 
but  Wordsworth,  and  it  is  quite  conceivable,  therefore,  that 
the  source  from  which  his  friend  had  derived  the  idea  of 
the  killing  of  the  albatross  may  (if  indeed  he  was  informed 
of  it  at  the  time)  have  escaped  his  memory  twelve  years 
afterwards,  when  the  conversation  with  De  Quincey  took 
place.  Hence,  in  "  disowning  his  obligations  to  Shel- 
vocke,"  he  may  not  by  any  means  have  intended  to  sug- 
gest that  the  albatross  incident  was  his  own  thought. 
Moreover,  De  Quincey  himself  supplies  another  explana- 
tion of  the  matter,  which  we  know,  from  the  above-quoted 
notes  of  Wordsworth's,  to  be  founded  upon  fact.  "  It  is 
possible,"  he  adds,  "  from  something  which  Coleridge  said 
on  another  occasion,  that  before  meeting  a  fable  in  which 
to  embody  his  ideas  he  had  meditated  a  poem  on  delirium, 
confounding  its  own  dream-scenery  with  external  things, 


60  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

and  connected  with  the  imagery  of  high  ladtudes,"  Noth- 
ing, in  fact,  would  be  more  natural  than  that  Coleridge, 
whose  idea  of  the  haunted  seafarer  was  primarily  suggested 
by  his  friend's  dream,  and  had  no  doubt  been  greatly  elab- 
orated in  his  own  imaginatJon  before  being  communicated 
to  Wordsworth  at  all,  should  have  been  unable,  after  a  con- 
siderable lapse  of  time,  to  distinguish  between  incidents  of 
his  own  imagining  and  those  suggested  to  him  by  others. 
And,  in  any  case,  the  "  unnecessary  scrupulosity,"  rightly 
attributed  to  him  by  Wordsworth  with  respect  to  this  very 
poem,  is  quite  incompatible  with  any  intentional  denial  of 
obligations. 

Such,  then,  was  the  singular  and  even  prosaic  origin  of 
the  Ancient  Mariner  —  a  poem  written  to  defray  the  ex- 
penses of  a  tour;  surely  the  most  sublime  of  "  pot-boilers" 
to  be  found  in  all  literature.  It  is  difficult,  from  amid  the 
astonishing  combination  of  the  elements  of  power,  to  select 
that  which  is  the  most  admirable ;  but,  considering  both 
the  character  of  the  story  and  of  its  particular  vehicle, 
perhaps  the  greatest  achievement  of  the  poem  is  the  sim- 
ple realistic  force  of  its  narrative.  To  achieve  this  was 
of  course  Coleridge's  main  object :  he  had  undertaken  to 
"transfer  from  our  inward  nature  a  human  interest  and  a 
semblance  of  truth  sufficient  to  procure  for  these  shadows 
of  imaginations  that  willing  suspension  of  disbelief  for  the 
moment  which  constitutes  poetic  faith."  But  it  is  easier 
to  undertake  this  than  to  perform  it,  and  much  easier  to 
perform  it  in  prose  than  in  verse — with  the  assistance  of 
the  everyday  and  the  commonplace  than  without  it.  Bal- 
zac's Peau  de  Chagrin  is  no  doubt  a  great  feat  of  the 
realistic-supernatural ;  but  no  one  can  help  feeling  how 
much  the  author  is  aided  by  his  "  broker's  clerk "  style 
of  description,  and  by  the  familiar  Parisian  scenes  among 


III.]  THE  "ANCIENT  MARINER."  51 

which  he  makes  his  hero  move.  It  is  easier  to  compass 
verisimilitude  in  the  Palais-Royal  than  on  the  South  Pa- 
cific, to  say  nothing  of  the  thousand  assisting  touches,  out 
of  place  in  rhyme  and  metre,  which  can  be  thrown  into  a 
prose  narrative.  The  Ancient  Mariner,  however,  in  spite  of 
all  these  drawbacks,  is  as  real  to  the  reader  as  is  the  hero 
of  the  Peau  de  Chagrin  ;  we  are  as  convinced  of  the  curse 
upon  one  of  the  doomed  wretches  as  upon  the  other;  and 
the  strange  phantasmagoric  haze  which  is  thrown  around 
the  ship  and  the  lonely  voyager  leaves  their  outlines  as  clear 
as  if  we  saw  them  through  the  sunshine  of  the  streets  of 
Paris.  Coleridge  triumphs  over  his  difficulties  by  sheer 
vividness  of  imagery  and  terse  vigour  of  descriptive  phrase 
— two  qualities  for  which  his  previous  poems  did  not 
prove  him  to  possess  by  any  means  so  complete  a  mastery. 
For  among  all  the  beauties  of  his  earlier  landscapes  we 
can  hardly  reckon  that  of  intense  and  convincing  truth. 
He  seems  seldom  before  to  have  written,  as  Wordsworth 
nearly  always  seemed  to  write,  "  with  his  eye  on  the  ob- 
ject ;"  and  certainly  he  never  before  displayed  any  remark- 
able power  of  completing  his  word -picture  with  a  few 
touches.  In  the  Ancient  Mariner  his  eye  seems  never  to 
wander  from  his  object,  and  again  and  again  the  scene 
starts  out  upon  the  canvas  in  two  or  three  strokes  of  the 
brush.  The  skeleton  ship,  with  the  dicing  demons  on  its 
deck ;  the  setting  sun  peering  "  through  its  ribs,  as  if 
through  a  dungeon -grate;"  the  water -snakes  under  the 
moonbeams,  with  the  "  elfish  light "  falling  oflE  them  "  in 
hoary  flakes"  when  they  reared  ;  the  dead  crew,  who  work 
the  ship  and  "raise  their  limbs  like  lifeless  tools" — every- 
thing seems  to  have  been  actually  seen,  and  we  believe  it 
all  as  the  story  of  a  truthful  eye-witness.  The  details  of 
the  voyage,  too,  are  all  chronicled  with  such  order  and 


52  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

regularity,  there  is  such  a  diary-Uke  air  about  the  whole 
thing,  that  we  accept  it  almost  as  if  it  were  a  series  of 
extracts  from  the  ship's  "log."  Then  again  the  execution 
— a  great  thing  to  be  said  of  so  long  a  poem — is  marvel- 
lously equal  throughout;  the  story  never  drags  or  flags 
for  a  moment,  its  felicities  of  diction  are  perpetual,  and 
it  is  scarcely  marred  by  a  single  weak  line.  What  could 
have  been  better  said  of  the  instantaneous  descent  of  the 
tropical  night  than — 

"  The  Sun's  rim  dips  ;  tlie  stars  rush  out : 
At  one  stride  comes  the  daric ;" 

what  more  weirdly  imagined  of  the  "  cracks  and  growls  " 
of  the  rending  iceberg  than  that  they  sounded  "  like  noises 
in  a  swound  ?"  Aud  how  beautifully  steals  in  the  passage 
that  follows  upon  the  cessation  of  the  spirit's  song — 

"It  ceased;  yet  still  the  sails  made  on 
A  pleasant  noise  till  noon, 
A  noise  like  to  a  hidden  brook 
In  the  leafy  month  of  June, 
That  to  the  sleeping  woods  all  night 
Singeth  a  quiet  tune." 

Then,  as  the  ballad  draws  to  its  close,  after  the  ship  has 
drifted  over  the  harbour-bar — 

"  And  I  with  sobs  did  pray — 
0  let  me  be  awake,  my  God ; 
Or  let  me  sleep  alway," 

with  what  consummate  art  are  we  left  to  imagine  the  phys- 
ical traces  which  the  mariner's  long  agony  had  left  be- 
hind it  by  a  method  far  more  terrible  than  any  direct  de- 
scription— the  effect,  namely,  which  the  sight  of  him  pro- 
duces upon  others — 


ex.]  "CHRISTABEL."  63 

"  I  moved  my  lips — the  Pilot  shrieked 
And  fell  down  in  a  fit ; 
The  holy  Hermit  raised  his  eyes, 
And  prayed  where  he  did  sit. 

"  I  took  the  oars :  the  Pilot's  boy, 
Who  now  doth  crazy  go, 
Laughed  loud  and  long,  and  all  the  while 
His  eyes  went  to  and  fro. 
'  Ha !  ha  !'  quoth  he,  '  full  plain  I  see 
The  Devil  knows  how  to  row.' " 

Perfect  consistency  of  plan,  in  short,  and  complete  equal- 
ity of  execution,  brevity,  self-restraint,  and  an  unerring 
sense  of  artistic  propriety  —  these  are  the  chief  notes  of 
the  Ancient  Mariner,  as  they  are  not,  in  my  humble  judg- 
ment, the  chief  notes  of  any  poem  of  Coleridge's  before 
or  since.  And  hence  it  is  that  this  masterpiece  of  bal- 
lad minstrelsy  is,  as  has  been  said,  so  confounding  to  the 
"  pigeon-holing  "  mind. 

The  next  most  famous  poem  of  this  or  indeed  of  any 
period  of  Coleridge's  life  is  the  fragment  of  Christabel, 
which,  however,  in  spite  of  the  poet's  own  opinion  on  that 
point,  it  is  difiicult  to  regard  as  "  a  more  effective  realiza- 
tion "  of  the  "  natural-supernatural  "  idea.  Beautiful  as  it 
IS,  it  possesses  none  of  that  human  interest  with  which, 
according  to  this  idea,  the  narrator  of  the  poetic  story 
must  undertake  to  invest  it.  Nor  can  the  unfinished  con- 
dition in  which  it  was  left  be  fairly  held  to  account  for 
this,  for  the  characters  themselves — the  lady  Christabel,  the 
witch  Geraldine,  and  even  the  baron  Sir  Leoline  himself — 
are  somewhat  shadowy  creations,  with  too  little  hold  upon 
life  and  reality,  and  too  much  resemblance  to  the  flitting 
figures  of  a  dream.  Powerful  in  their  way  as  are  the 
lines  descriptive  of  the  spell  thrown  over  Christabel  by 


64  COLERIDGE.  Icbat. 

her  uncanny  guest — lines  at  the  recitation  of  which  Shel- 
ley is  said  to  have  fainted — we  cannot  say  that  they  strike 
a  reader  with  such  a  sense  of  horror  as  should  be  excited 
by  the  contemplation  of  a  real  flesh -and -blood  maiden 
subdued  by  "  the  shrunken  serpent  eyes "  of  a  sorceress, 
and  constrained  "passively  to  imitate"  their  "look  of  dull 
and  treacherous  hate,"  Judging  it,  however,  by  any  other 
standard  than  that  of  the  poet's  own  erecting,  one  must 
certainly  admit  the  claim  of  Christabel  to  rank  very  high 
as  a  work  of  pure  creative  art.  It  is  so  thoroughly  suf- 
fused and  permeated  with  the  glow  of  mystical  romance, 
the  whole  atmosphere  of  the  poem  is  so  exquisitely  ap- 
propriate to  the  subject,  and  so  marvellously  preserved 
throughout,  that  our  lack  of  belief  in  the  reality  of  the 
scenes  presented  to  us  detracts  but  little  from  the  pleasure 
afforded  by  the  artistic  excellence  of  its  presentment.  It 
abounds,  too,  in  isolated  pictures  of  surpassing  vividness 
and  grace — word-pictures  which  live  in  the  "  memory  of 
the  eye"  with  all  the  wholeness  and  tenacity  of  an  actual 
painting.  Geraldine  appearing  to  Christabel  beneath  the 
oak,  and  the  two  women  stepping  lightly  across  the  hall 
"  that  echoes  still,  pass  as  lightly  as  you  will,"  are  pictures 
of  this  kind;  and  nowhere  out  of  Keats's  Eve  of  St.  Agnes 
is  there  any  "  interior "  to  match  that  of  Christabers 
chamber,  done  as  it  is  in  little  more  than  half  a  dozen 
lines.  These  beauties,  it  is  true,  are  fragmentary,  like  the 
poem  itself,  but  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  the  poem 
itself  would  have  gained  anything  in  its  entirety — that  is 
to  say,  as  a  poetic  narrative — by  completion.  Its  main 
idea — that  the  purity  of  a  pure  maiden  is  a  charm  more 
powerful  for  the  protection  of  those  dear  to  her  than  the 
spells  of  the  evil  one  for  their  destruction — had  been  al- 
ready sufficiently  indicated,  and  the  mode  in  which  Cole- 


III.]  "  CHRISTABEL."  85 

ridge,  it  seems,  intended  to  have  worked  would  hardly 
have  added  anything  to  its  effect.'  And  although  he 
clung  till  very  late  in  life  to  the  belief  that  he  could  have 
finished  it  in  after-days  with  no  change  of  poetic  manner 
— "  If  easy  in  my  mind,"  he  says  in  a  letter  to  be  quoted 
hereafter,  "  I  have  no  doubt  either  of  the  reawakening 
power  or  of  the  kindling  inclination"  —  there  are  few 
students  of  his  later  poems  who  will  share  his  confidence. 

'  Mr.  Gillman  (in  his  Z(/>,  p.  801)  gives  the  following  somewhat 
bald  outline  of  wliat  were  to  form  the  two  concluding  cantos,  no 
doubt  on  the  authority  of  Coleridge  himself.  The  second  canto  ends, 
it  may  be  remembered,  with  the  despatch  of  Bracy  the  bard  to  the 
castle  of  Sir  Roland:  "Over  the  mountains  the  Bard,  as  directed 
by  Sir  Leoline,  hastes  with  his  disciple ;  but,  in  consequence  of  one 
of  those  inundations  supposed  to  be  common  to  the  countr)',  the 
spot  only  where  the  castle  once  stood  is  discovered,  the  edifice  itself 
being  washed  awaj'.  He  determines  to  return.  Geraldine,  being 
acquainted  with  all  that  is  passing,  like  the  weird  sisters  in  Macbeth, 
vanishes.  Reappearing,  however,  she  awaits  the  return  of  the  Bard, 
exciting  in  the  meantime  by  her  wily  arts  all  tlie  anger  she  could 
rouse  in  the  Baron's  breast,  as  well  as  that  jealousy  of  which  he  is 
described  to  have  been  susceptible.  The  old  bard  and  the  youth  at 
length  arrive,  and  therefore  she  can  no  longer  personate  the  char- 
acter of  Geraldine,  the  daughter  of  Lord  Roland  de  Vaux,  but  changes 
her  appearance  to  that  of  the  accepted  though  absent  lover  of  Chris- 
tabel.  Next  ensues  a  courtship  most  distressing  to  Christabel,  who 
feels  —  she  knows  not  why  —  great  disgust  for  her  once  favoured 
knight.  This  coldness  is  very  painful  to  the  Baron,  who  has  no 
more  conception  than  herself  of  the  supernatural  transformation. 
She  at  last  yields  to  her  father's  entreaties,  and  consents  to  approach 
the  altar  with  the  hated  suitor.  The  real  lover  returning,  enters  at 
this  moment,  and  produces  the  ring  which  she  had  once  given  him 
in  sign  of  her  betrothment.  Thus  defeated,  the  supernatural  being 
Geraldine  disappears.  As  predicted,  the  castle-bell  tolls,  the  mother's 
voice  is  heard,  and,  to  the  exceeding  great  joy  of  the  parties,  the 
rightful  marriage  takes  place,  after  which  follows  a  reconciliation 
and  explanation  between  father  and  daughter." 
E 


66  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

Charles  Laml)  strongly  recommended  him  to  leave  it  un- 
finished, and  Hartley  Coleridge,  in  every  respect  as  com- 
petent a  judge  on  that  point  as  could  well  be  found,  al 
ways  declared  his  conviction  that  his  father  could  not,  a\ 
least  qualis  ah  incejito,  have  finished  the  poem. 

The  much-admired  little  piece  first  published  in  the 
Lyrical  Ballads  under  the  title  of  Love,  and  probably 
best  known  by  its  (original)  first  and  most  pregnant 
stanza,'  possesses  a  twofold  interest  for  the  student  of 
Coleridge's  life  and  works,  as  illustrating  at  once  one  of 
the  most  marked  characteristics  of  his  peculiar  tempera- 
ment, and  one  of  the  most  distinctive  features  of  his 
poetic  manner.  The  lines  are  remarkable  for  a  certain 
strange  fascination  of  melody — a  quality  for  which  Cole- 
ridge, who  was  not  unreasonably  proud  of  his  musical 
gift,  is  said  to  have  especially  prized  them ;  and  they  are 
noteworthy  also  as  perhaps  the  fullest  expression  of  the  al- 
most womanly  softness  of  Coleridge's  nature.  To  describe 
their  tone  as  effeminate  would  be  unfair  and  untrue,  for 
effeminacy  in  the  work  of  a  male  hand  would  necessarily 
imply  something  of  falsity  of  sentiment,  and  from  this 
they  are  entirely  free.  But  it  must  certainly  be  admitted 
that  for  a  man's  description  of  his  wooing  the  warmth  of 
feeling  which  pervades  them  is  as  nearly  sexless  in  char- 
acter as  it  is  possible  to  conceive  ;  and,  beautiful  as  the 
verses  are,  one  cannot  but  feel  that  they  only  escape  the 
"namby-pamby"  by  the  breadth  of  a  hair. 

As  to  the  wild  dream-poem  Kabla  Khan,  it  is  hardly 
more  than  a  psychological  curiosity,  and  only  that  per- 

'  "  All  thoughts,  all  passions,  all  delights, 
Whatever  stirs  tliis  mortal  frame, 
All  are  but  niiuisters  of  Love, 
And  feed  his  sacred  llaiue." 


111.]  "  KUBLA  KHAN."  57 

liaps  in  respect  of  the  completeness  of  its  metrical  form. 
For  amid  its  picturesque  but  vague  imagery  there  is  noth- 
ing which  might  not  have  presented  itself,  and  the  like 
of  which  has  not  perhaps  actually  presented  itself,  to 
many  a  half-awakened  brain  of  far  lower  imaginative  en- 
ergy during  its  hours  of  full  daylight  consciousness  than 
that  of  Coleridge.  Nor  possibly  is  it  quite  an  unknown 
experience  to  many  of  us  to  have  even  a  fully-written 
record,  so  to  speak,  of  such  impressions  imprinted  instan- 
taneously on  the  mind,  the  conscious  composition  of  whole 
pages  of  narrative,  descriptive,  or  cogitative  matter  being 
compressed  as  it  were  into  a  moment  of  time.  Unfortu- 
nately, however,  the  impression  made  upon  the  ordinary 
bi'ain  is  effaced  as  instantaneously  as  it  is  produced ;  the 
abnormal  exaltation  of  the  creative  and  apprehensive  power 
is  quite  momentary,  being  probably,  indeed,  confined  to 
the  single  moment  between  sleep  and  waking ;  and  the 
mental  tablet  which  a  second  before  was  covered  so  thickly 
with  the  transcripts  of  ideas  and  images,  all  far  more  vivid, 
or  imagined  to  be  so,  than  those  of  Avaking  life,  and  all 
apprehended  with  a  miraculous  simultaneity  by  the  mind, 
is  converted  into  a  tabula  rasa  in  the  twinkling  of  a  half- 
opened  eye.  The  wonder  in  Coleridge's  case  was  that  his 
brain  retained  the  word-impressions  sufficiently  long  to  en- 
able him  to  commit  them,  to  the  extent  at  least  of  some 
fifty  odd  lines,  to  paper,  and  that,  according  to  his  own 
belief,  this  is  but  a  mere  fraction  of  what  but  for  an  un- 
lucky interruption  in  the  work  of  transcribing  he  would 
have  been  able  to  preserve.  His  own  account  of  this  curi- 
ous incident  is  as  follows : 

"la  the  summer  of  1797  the  author,  then  in  ill  health,  had  re- 
tired to  a  lonel.v  farmhouse  between  Porlock  and  Linton,  on  the 
Exmoor  confines  of  Somerset  and  Devon.shire.     In  consequence  of 


68  COLERIDGE.  [chat. 

a  slight  indisposition,  an  anodyne  had  been  prescribed,  fromxfthe 
effects  of  which  he  fell  asleep  in  his  chair  at  the  moment  that 
he  was  reading  the  following  sentence,  or  words  of  the  same  sub- 
stance, in  Purchas's  Pilgrimage :  '  Here  the  Khan  Kubla  commanded 
a  palace  to  be  built,  and  a  stately  garden  thereunto.  And  thus  ten 
miles  of  fertile  ground  were  enclosed  by  a  wall.'  The  Author  con- 
tinued for  about  three  hours  in  a  profound  sleep,  at  least  of  the  ex- 
ternal senses,  during  which  time  he  has  the  most  vivid  confidence 
that  he  could  not  have  composed  less  than  from  two  to  three  hun- 
dred lines — if  that  indeed  can  be  called  composition  in  which  all  the 
images  rose  up  before  him  as  things,  with  a  parallel  production  of 
the  corresponding  expressions,  without  any  sensation  or  conscious- 
ness of  effect.  On  awaking  he  appeared  to  himself  to  have  a  dis- 
tinct recollection  of  the  whole,  and,  taking  his  pen,  ink,  and  paper, 
instantly  and  eagerly  wrote  down  the  lines  that  are  here  preserved. 
At  this  moment  he  was  unfortunately  called  out  by  a  person  on  busi- 
ness from  Porlock,  and  detained  by  him  above  an  hour,  and  on  his 
return  to  his  room  found,  to  his  no  small  surprise  and  mortification, 
that  though  he  still  retained  some  vague  and  dim  recollection  of  the 
general  purport  of  the  vision,  yet,  with  the  exception  of  some  eight 
or  ten  scattered  lines  and  images,  all  the  rest  had  passed  away  like 
the  images  on  the  surface  of  a  stream  into  which  a  stone  has  been 
oast,  but,  alas !  without  the  after  restoration  of  the  latter." 

This  poem,  though  written  in  1*797,  remained,  lilce  Chris- 
iabel,  in  MS.  till  1816.  These  were  then  published  in  a 
thin  quarto  volume,  together  with  another  piece  called  the 
Pains  of  Sleep,  a  composition  of  many  years'  later  date 
than  the  other  two,  and  of  which  there  will  be  occasion  to 
say  a  word  or  two  hereafter. 

At  no  time,  however,  not  even  in  this  the  high-tide  of 
its  activity,  was  the  purely  poetic  impulse  dominant  for 
long  together  in  Coleridge's  mind.  lie  was  born  with  the 
instincts  of  the  orator,  and  still  more  with  those  of  the 
teacher,  and  I  doubt  whether  he  ever  really  regarded  him- 
self as  fulfilling  the  true  mission  of  his  life  except  at  those 
moments  when  he  was  seeking  by  spol-en  word  to  oxer- 


iii.j  HE  APPEARS  IN  THE  PULPIT.  59 

ci|f  direct  influence  over  his  fellow-men.  At  the  same 
time,  however,  such  was  the  restlessness  of  his  intellect, 
and  such  his  instability  of  purpose,  that  he  could  no  more 
remain  constant  to  what  he  deemed  his  true  vocation  than 
he  could  to  any  other.  This  was  now  to  be  signally  illus- 
trated. Soon  after  the  Ancient  Mariner  was  written,  and 
some  time  before  the  volume  which  was  to  contain  it  ap- 
peared, Coleridge  quitted  Stowey  for  Shrewsbury  to  un- 
dertake the  duties  of  a  Unitarian  preacher  in  that  town. 
This  was  in  the  month  of  January,  1798,*  and  it  seems 
pretty  certain,  though  exact  dates  are  not  to  be  ascer- 
tained, that  he  was  back  again  at  Stowey  early  in  the 
month  of  February.  In  the  pages  of  the  Liberal  (1822) 
William  Hazlitt  has  given  a  most  graphic  and  picturesque 
description  of  Coleridge's  appearance  and  performance  in 
his  Shrewsbury  pulpit ;  and,  judging  from  this,  one  can 
well  believe,  what  indeed  was  to  have  been  antecedently 
expected,  that  had  he  chosen  to  remain  faithful  to  his  new 
employment  he  might  have  rivalled  the  reputation  of  the 
greatest  preacher  of  the  time.  But  his  friends  the  Wedg- 
woods, the  two  sons  of  the  great  potter,  whose  acquaint- 
ance he  had  made  a  few  years  earlier,  were  apparently 
much  dismayed  at  the  prospect  of  his  deserting  the  library 
for  the  chapel,  and  they  offered  him  an  annuity  of  £150 
a  year  on  condition  of  his  retiring  from  the  ministry  and 
devoting  himself  entirely  to  the  study  of  poetry  and  phi- 
losophy.    Coleridge  was  staying  at  the  house  of  Ilazlitt's 

'  It  may  be  suggested  that  this  sudden  resolution  was  forced  upon 
Coleridge  by  the  res  angusta  domi.  But  I  do  not  think  that  was  the 
case.  In  the  w^inter  of  1797  he  had  obtained  an  introduction  to  and 
entered  into  a  literary  engagement  with  Mr.  Stuart,  of  the  Morning 
Post,  and  could  thus  have  met,  as  in  fact  he  afterwards  did  meet,  tU« 
necessities  of  the  hour. 


60  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

father  Avlien  the  letter  containing  this  liberal  offer  reac^d 
him,  "  and  he  seemed,"  says  the  younger  Hazlitt,  "  to 
make  up  his  mind  to  close  with  the  proposal  in  the  act  of 
tying  on  one  of  his  shoes."  Another  inducement  to  so 
speedy  an  acceptance  of  it  is  no  doubt  to  be  found  in  the 
fact  of  its  presenting  to  Coleridge  an  opportunity  for  the 
fulfilment  of  a  cherished  desire — that,  namely,  of  "  com- 
pleting his  education,"  as  he  regarded  it,  by  studying  the 
German  language,  and  acquiring  an  acquaintance  with  the 
theology  and  philosophy  of  Germany  in  that  country  itself. 
This  prospect  he  was  enabled,  through  the  generosity  of 
the  Wedgwoods,  to  put  into  execution  towards  the  end  of 
1798. 

But  before  passing  on  from  this  culminating  and,  to  all 
intents  and  purposes,  this  closing  year  of  Coleridge's  ca- 
reer as  a  poet  it  will  be  proper  to  attempt  something  like 
a  final  review  of  his  poetic  work.  Admirable  as  much  of 
that  work  is,  and  unique  in  quality  as  it  is  throughout,  I 
must  confess  that  it  leaves  on  my  own  mind  a  stronger 
impression  of  the  unequal  and  imperfect  than  does  that  of 
any  poet  at  all  approaching  Coleridge  in  imaginative  vigour 
and  intellectual  grasp.  It  is  not  a  mere  inequality  and 
imperfection  of  style  like  that  which  so  seriously  detracts 
from  the  pleasure  of  reading  Byron.  Nor  is  it  that  the 
thought  is  often  impar  sibi — that,  like  Wordsworth's,  it  is 
too  apt  to  descend  from  the  mountain-tops  of  poetry  to  the 
flats  of  commonplace,  if  not  into  the  bogs  of  bathos.  In  both 
these  respects  Coleridge  may  and  does  occasionally  offend, 
but  his  workmanship  is,  on  the  wholcj^as  much  more  artistic 
than  Byron's  as  the  material  of  his  poetry  is  of  more  uni- 
formly equal  value  than  Wordsworth's.  Yet,  with  almost 
the  sole  exception  of  the  Ancient  Mariner,  his  work  is  in 


iii.J  HIS  POETIC  WOEK.  61 

a  certain  sense  more  disappointing  than  that  of  either.  In 
spite  of  his  theory  as  to  the  twofold  function  of  poetry 
we  must  finally  judge  that  of  Coleridge,  as  of  any  other 
poet,  by  its  relation  to  the  actual.  Ancient  Mariners  and 
Christabels — the  people,  the  scenery,  and  the  incidents  of 
an  imaginary  world — may  be  handled  by  poetry  once  and 
again  to  the  wonder  and  delight  of  man  ;  but  feats  of  this 
kind  cannot — or  cannot  in  the  Western  world,  at  any  rate 
— be  repeated  indefinitely,  and  the  ultimate  test  of  poetry, 
at  least  for  the  modern  European  reader,  is  its  treatment 
of  actualities — its  relations  to  the  world  of  human  action, 
passion,  sensation,  thought.  And  when  we  try  Coleridge's 
poetry  in  any  one  of  these  four  regions  of  life,  we  seem 
forced  to  admit  that,  despite  all  its  power  and  beauty,  it 
at  no  moment  succeeds  in  convincing  us,  as  at  their  best 
moments  Wordsworth's  and  even  Byron's  continually  does, 
that  the  poet  has  found  his  true  poetic  vocation — that  he 
is  interpreting  that  aspect  of  life  which  he  can  interpret 
better  than  he  can  any  other,  and  which  no  other  poet, 
save  the  one  who  has  vanquished  all  poets  in  their  own 
special  fields  of  achievement,  can  interpret  as  well  as  he. 
In  no  poem  of  actuality  does  Coleridge  so  victoriously 
show  himself  to  be  the  right  man  at  the  right  work  as 
does  Wordsworth  in  certain  moods  of  seership  and  Byron 
in  certain  moments  of  passion.  Of  them  at  such  moods 
and  moments  we  feel  assured  that  they  have  discovered 
where  their  real  strength  lies,  and  have  put  it  forth  to  the 
utmost.  But  we  never  feel  satisfied  that  Coleridge  has 
discovered  where  his  real  strength  lies,  and  he  strikes  us  as 
feeling  no  more  certainty  on  the  point  himself.  Strong 
as  is  bis  pinion,  his  flight  seems  to  resemble  rather  that  of 
the  eaglet  than  of  the  full-grown  eagle  even  to  the  last. 
He  continues  "mewing  his  mightv  youth"  a  little  too 


62  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

long.  There  is  a  tentativeness  of  manner  which  seems  to 
come  from  a  conscious  aptitude  for  many  poetic  styles 
and  an  incapacity  to  determine  which  should  be  definitely 
adopted  and  cultivated  to  perfection.  Hence  one  too  often 
returns  from  any  prolonged  ramble  through  Coleridge's 
poetry  with  an  unsatisfied  feeling  which  does  not  trouble 
us  on  our  return  from  the  best  literary  country  of  Byron 
or  Wordsworth.  Byron  has  taken  us  by  rough  roads,  and 
Wordsworth  led  us  through  some  desperately  flat  and 
dreary  lowlands  to  his  favourite  "  bits ;"  but  we  feel  that 
we  have  seen  mountain  and  valley,  wood  and  river,  glen 
and  waterfall  at  their  best.  But  Coleridge's  poetry  leaves 
too  much  of  the  feeling  of  a  walk  through  a  fine  country 
on  a  misty  day.  We  may  have  had  many  a  peep  of  beau- 
tiful scenery  and  occasional  glimpses  of  the  sublime ;  but 
the  medium  of  vision  has  been  of  variable  quality,  and 
somehow  we  come  home  with  an  uneasy  suspicion  that  we 
have  not  seen  as  much  as  we  might. 

It  is  obvious,  however,  even  upon  a  cursory  considera- 
tion of  the  matter,  that  this  disappointing  element  in  Cole- 
ridge's poetry  is  a  necessary  result  of  the  circumstances  of 
its  production  ;  for  the  period  of  his  productive  activity  (at 
least  after  attaining  manhood)  was  too  short  to  enable  a 
mind  with  so  many  intellectual  distractions  to  ascertain  its 
true  poetic  bent,  and  to  concentrate  its  energies  thereupon. 
If  he  seems  always  to  be  feeling  his  way  towards  the  work 
whicb  he  could  do  best,  it  is  for  the  very  good  reason  that 
this  is  what,  from  1796  to  1800,  he  was  continually  doing 
as  a  matter  of  fact.  The  various  styles  which  he  attempted 
— and  for  a  season,  in  each  case,  witli  such  brilliant  results 
— are  forms  of  poetic  expression  corresponding,  on  the 
face  of  them,  to  poetic  impulses  of  an  essentially  fleeting 
nature.     The  political  or  politico-religious  odes  were  the 


III.]  DECLINE   OF   POETIC   IMPULSE.  63 

offspring  of  youthful  democratic  enthusiasm ;  the  super- 
natural poems,  so  to  call  them  for  want  of  a  better  name, 
had  their  origin  in  an  almost  equally  youthful  and  more 
than  equally  transitory  passion  for  the  wild  and  Avondrous. 
Political  disillusion  is  fatal  to  the  one  impulse,  and  mere 
advance  in  years  extinguishes  the  other.  Visions  of  An- 
cient Mariners  and  Christabels  do  not  revisit  the  mature 
man,  and  the  Toryism  of  middle  life  will  hardly  inspire 
odes  to  anything. 

With  the  extinction  of  these  two  forms  of  creative  im- 
pulse Coleridge's  poetic  activity,  from  causes  to  be  con- 
sidered hereafter,  came  almost  entirely  to  an  end,  and  into 
what  later  forms  it  might  subsequently  have  developed  re- 
mains therefore  a  matter  more  or  less  of  conjecture.  Yet 
I  think  there  is  almost  a  sufficiency  of  a  priori  evidence  as 
to  what  that  form  would  have  been.  Had  the  poet  in  him 
survived  until  years  had  "  brought  the  philosophic  mind," 
he  would  doubtless  have  done  for  the  human  spirit,  in  its 
purely  isolated  self-communings,  what  "Wordsworth  did  for 
it  in  its  communion  with  external  nature.  All  that  the 
poetry  of  Wordsworth  is  for  the  mind  which  loves  to  hold 
converse  with  the  world  of  things ;  this,  and  more  perhaps 
than  this — if  more  be  possible — would  the  poetry  of  Cole- 
ridge have  been  for  the  mind  which  abides  by  preference 
in  the  world  of  self-originating  emotion  and  introspective 
thought.  Wordsworth's  primary  function  is  to  interpret 
nature  to  man  :  the  interpretation  of  man  to  himself  is  witb 
him  a  secondary  process  only — the  response,  in  almost  ev- 
ery instance,  to  impressions  from  without.  This  poet  can 
nobly  brace  the  human  heart  to  fortitude ;  but  he  must 
first  have  seen  the  leech-gatherer  on  the  lonely  moor.  The 
"presence  and  the  spirit  interfused"  throughout  creation 
4 


64  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

is  revealed  to  us  in  moving  and  majestic  words ;  yet  the 
poet  requires  to  have  felt  it  "  in  the  light  of  setting  suns 
and  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air"  before  he  feels  it 
"  in  the  mind  of  man."  But  what  Wordsworth  grants  only 
to  the  reader  who  wanders  with  him  in  imagination  by  lake 
and  mountain,  the  Muse  of  Coleridge,  had  she  lived,  would 
have  bestowed  upon  the  man  who  has  entered  into  his  in- 
ner chamber  and  shut  to  the  door.  This,  it  seems  to  me, 
is  the  work  for  which  genius,  temperament,  and  intellect- 
ual habit  would  alike  have  fitted  him.  For  while  his  feel- 
ing for  internal  nature  was  undoubtedly  less  profound,  less 
mystically  penetrating  than  Wordsworth's,  his  sensibilities 
in  general  were  incomparably  quicker  and  more  subtle  than 
those  of  the  friend  in  whom  he  so  generously  recognised 
a  master ;  and  the  reach  of  his  sympathies  extends  to  forms 
of  human  emotion,  to  subjects  of  human  interest  which  lay 
altogether  outside  the  somewhat  narrow  range  of  Words- 
worth. 

And,  with  so  magnificent  a  furniture  of  those  mental  and 
moral  qualities  which  should  belong  to  "  a  singer  of  man 
to  men,"  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  his  technical  equip- 
ment for  the  work  was  of  the  most  splendidly  effective 
kind.  If  a  critic  like  Mr.  Swinburne  seems  to  speak  in  ex- 
aggerated praise  of  Coleridge's  lyrics,  we  can  well  under- 
stand their  enchantment  for  a  master  of  music  like  him- 
self. Probably  it  was  the  same  feeling  which  made  Shel- 
ley describe  France  as  "  the  finest  ode  in  the  English  lan- 
guage." With  all,  in  fact,  who  hold — as  it  is  surely  plausi- 
ble to  hold — that  the  first  duty  of  a  singer  is  to  sing,  the 
poetry  of  Coleridge  will  always  be  more  likely  to  be  classed 
above  than  below  its  merits,  great  as  they  are.  For,  if  we 
except  some  occasional  lapses  in  his  sonnets — a  metrical 


III.]  HIS  POETIC  WOKK.  65 

form  in  which,  at  his  best,  he  is  quite  "  out  of  the  run- 
ning "  with  Wordsworth — his  melody  never  fails  him.  lie 
is  a  singer  always,  as  Wordsworth  is  not  always,  and  Byron 
almost  never.  The  ^-Eolian  harp  to  which  he  so  loved  to 
listen  does  not  more  surely  respond  in  music  to  the  breeze 
of  heaven  than  does  Coleridge's  poetic  utterance  to  the 
wind  of  his  inspiration.  Of  the  dreamy  fascination  w-hich 
Love  exercises  over  a  listening  ear  I  have  already  spoken ; 
and  there  is  hardly  less  charm  in  the  measure  and  asso- 
nances of  the  Circassian  Love  Chant.  Christabel  again, 
considered  solely  from  the  metrical  point  of  view,  is  a  veri- 
table tour  deforce — the  very  model  of  a  metre  for  roman- 
tic legend :  as  which,  indeed,  it  was  imitated  with  suffi- 
cient grace  and  spirit,  but  seldom  with  anything  approach- 
ing to  Coleridge's  melody,  by  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

Endowed  therefore  with  so  glorious  a  gift  of  song,  and 
only  not  fully  master  of  his  poetic  means  because  of  the 
very  versatility  of  his  artistic  power  and  the  very  variety 
and  catholicity  of  his  youthful  sympathies,  it  is  unhappily 
but  too  certain  that  the  world  has  lost  much  by  that  per- 
versity of  conspiring  accidents  which  so  untimely  silenced 
Coleridge's  muse.  And  the  loss  is  the  more  trying  to  pos- 
terity because  he  seems,  to  a  not,  I  think,  too  curiously  con- 
sidering criticism,  to  have  once  actually  struck  that  very 
chord  which  would  have  sounded  the  most  movingly  be- 
neath his  touch — and  to  have  struck  it  at  the  very  moment 
when  the  failing  hand  was  about  to  quit  the  keys  forever. 

"  Osteudimt  terris  bunc  tantum  fata  neque  ultra 
Esse  sinunt." 

I  cannot  regard  it  as  merely  fantastic  to  believe  that  the 
Dejection,  that  dirge  of  infinite  pathos  over  the  grave  of 


66  COLERIDGE.  [cuap.  hi. 

creative  imagination,  might,  but  for  the  fatal  decree  which 
had  by  that  time  gone  forth  against  Coleridge's  health  and 
happiness,  have  been  but  the  cradle-cry  of  a  new-born  po- 
etic power,  in  which  imagination,  not  annihilated  but  trans- 
migrant, would  have  splendidly  proved  its  vitality  through 
other  forms  of  song. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

VISIT  TO  GERMANY. —  LIFE  AT  GOTTINGEN.  —  RETURN.  —  EX- 
PLORES THE  LAKE  COUNTRY.  —  LONDON. —  THE  "MORNING 
POST." — COLERIDGE  AS  A  JOURNALIST. — RETIREMENT  TO 
KESWICK. 

[1799-1800.] 

The  departure  of  the  two  poets  for  the  Continent  was  de- 
layed only  till  they  had  seen  their  joint  volume  through 
the  press.  The  Lyrical  Ballads  appeared  in  the  autumn 
of  1798,  and  on  16th  September  of  that  year  Coleridge 
left  Yarmouth  for  Hamburg  with  Wordsworth  and  his  sis- 
ter.' The  purpose  of  his  two  companions'  tour  is  not  known 
to  have  been  other  than  the  pleasure,  or  mi.xed  pleasure  and 
instruction,  usually  derivable  from  foreign  travel ;  that  of 
Coleridge  was  strictly,  even  sternly,  educational.  Imme- 
diately on  his  arrival  in  Germany  he  parted  from  the  Words- 
worths,  who  went  on  to  Goslar,^  and  took  up  his  abode  at 

*  De  Quincey's  error,  in  supposing  that  Coleridge's  visit  to  Ger- 
many to  "complete  his  education"  was  made  at  an  earlier  date  than 
this  journey  with  the  Wordsworths,  is  a  somewhat  singular  mistake 
for  one  so  well  acquainted  with  the  facts  of  Coleridge's  life.  Had  we 
not  his  own  statement  that  this  of  1798  was  the  first  occasion  of  his 
quitting  his  native  country,  it  so  happens  that  we  can  account  in 
England  for  nearly  every  month  of  his  time  from  his  leaving  Cam- 
bridge until  this  date. 

^  It  has  only  within  a  comparatively  recent  period  been  ascertained 
that  the  visit  of  the  Wordsworths  to  Germany  was  itself  another  re- 
sult of  Thomas  Wedgwood's  generous  appreciation  of  literary  merit. 
It  appears,  on  the  incontrovertible  testimony  of  the  Wedgwoods'  ac- 


68  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

the  house  of  the  pastor  at  Ratzeburg,  with  whom  he  spent 
five  months  in  assiduous  study  of  the  language.  In  Jan- 
uary he  removed  to  Gottingen.  Of  his  life  here  during 
the  next  few  months  we  possess  an  interesting  record  in 
the  Early  Years  and  Late  Reflections  of  Dr.  Carrlyon,  a 
book  published  many  years  after  the  events  which  it  re- 
lates, but  which  is  quite  obviously  a  true  reflection  of  im- 
pressions yet  fresh  in  the  mind  of  its  writer  when  its 
materials  were  first  collected.  Its  principal  value,  in  fact, 
is  that  it  gives  us  Coleridge  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
average  young  educated  Englishman  of  the  day,  sufficient- 
ly intelligent,  indeed,  to  bo  sensible  of  his  fellow-student's 
transcendent  abilities,  but  as  little  awed  by  them  out  of 
youth's  healthy  irreverence  of  criticism  as  the  ordinary 
English  undergraduate  ever  has  been  by  the  intellectual 
supremacy  of  any  "greatest  man  of  his  day"  who  might 
chance  to  have  been  his  contemporary  at  O.xford  or  Cam- 
bridge. In  Dr.  Carrlyon's  reminiscences  and  in  the  quoted 
letters  of  a  certain  young  Parry,  another  of  the  English 
student  colony  at  Gottingen,  we  get  a  piquant  picture  of 
the  poet- philosopher  of  seven -and- twenty,  with  his  yet 
buoyant  belief  in  his  future,  his  still  unquenched  interest 
in  the  world  of  things,  and  his  never-to-bc-qucnched  in- 
terest in  the  world  of  thought,  his  even  then  inexhaustible 
flow  of  disquisition,  his  generous  admiration  for  the  gifts 
of  others,  and  his  nalive  complacency— including,  it  would 
seem,  a  touch  of  the  vanity  of  personal  appearance — in 
his  own.  "  lie  frequently,"  writes  Dr.  Carrlyon,  "  recited 
his  own  poetry,  and  not  unfrequently  led  us  further  into 

counts  with  their  agents  at  Hamburg,  that  tlie  expenses  of  all  three 
travellers  were  defrayed  by  their  friend  at  home.  The  credits  opened 
for  them  amounted,  during  the  course  of  their  stay  abroad,  to  some 
£2C0. — Miss  Meteyard's  A  Group  of  Enr/lishnen,  p.  99. 


IV.]  VISIT   TO  GERMANY.  69 

the  labyrinth  of  his  metaphysical  elucidations,  either  of 
particular  passages  or  of  the  original  conception  of  any 
of  his  productions,  than  we  were  able  to  follow  him.  At 
the  conclusion,  for  instance,  of  the  first  stanza  of  Chris- 
tabel,  he  would  perhaps  comment  at  full  length  upon 
such  a  line  as  *  Tu-whit! — Tu-whoo!'  that  we  might  not 
fall  into  the  mistake  of  supposing  originality  to  be  its 
sole  merit."  The  example  is  not  very  happily  chosen,  for 
Coleridge  could  hardly  have  claimed  "  originality  "  for  an 
onomatopoeia  which  occurs  in  one  of  Shakspeare's  best 
known  lyrics ;  but  it  serves  well  enough  to  illustrate  the 
fact  that  he  "  very  seldom  went  right  to  the  end  of  any 
piece  of  poetry ;  to  pause  and  analyse  was  his  delight." 
His  disappointment  with  regard  to  his  tragedy  of  Osorio 
was,  we  also  learn,  still  fresh.  He  seldom,  we  are  told, 
"  recited  any  of  the  beautiful  passages  with  which  it 
abounds  without  a  visible  interruption  of  the  perfect  com- 
posure of  his  mind."  He  mentioned  with  great  emotion 
Sheridan's  inexcusable  treatment  of  him  with  respect  to 
it.  At  the  same  time,  adds  his  friend,  "he  is  a  severe 
critic  of  his  own  productions,  and  declares  "  (this  no  doubt 
with  reference  to  his  then,  and  indeed  his  constant  esti- 
mate of  Christahel  as  his  masterpiece)  "  that  his  best 
poems  have  perhaps  not  appeared  in  print." 

Young  Parry's  account  of  his  fellow  -  student  is  also 
fresh  and  pleasing.  "  It  is  very  delightful,"  he  tells  a 
correspondent,  "  to  hear  him  sometimes  discourse  on  re- 
ligious topics  for  an  hour  together.  His  fervour  is  par- 
ticularly agreeable  when  compared  with  the  chilling  spec- 
ulations of  German  philosophers,"  whom  Coleridge,  he 
adds,  "  successively  forced  to  abandon  all  their  strong- 
holds." He  is  "much  liked,  notwithstanding  many  pe- 
culiarities.    He  is  very  liberal  towards  all  doctrines  and 


70  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

opinions,  and  cannot  be  put  out  of  temper.  These  cir- 
cumstances give  him  the  advantage  of  his  opponents,  who 
are  always  bigoted  and  often  irascible.  Coleridge  is  an 
enthusiast  on  many  subjects,  and  must  therefore  appear  to 
many  to  possess  faults,  and  no  doubt  he  has  faults,  but  he 
has  a  good  heart  and  a  large  mass  of  information  with," 
as  his  fellow  -  student  condescendingly  admits,  "  superior 
talents.  The  great  fault  which  his  friends  may  lament  is 
the  variety  of  subjects  which  he  adopts,  and  the  abstruse 
nature  of  his  ordinary  speculations,  extra  homines  positas. 
They  can  easily,"  concludes  the  writer,  rising  here  to  the 
full  stateliness  of  youth's  epistolary  style — "  they  can  easily 
excuse  his  devoted  attachment  to  his  country,  and  his  rea- 
soning as  to  the  means  of  producing  the  greatest  human 
happiness,  but  they  do  not  universally  approve  the  mys- 
ticism of  his  metaphysics  and  the  remoteness  of  his  topics 
from  human  comprehension." 

In  the  month  of  May,  1799,  Coleridge  set  out  with  a 
party  of  his  fellow-students  on  a  walking  tour  tlirough 
the  Harz  Mountains,  an  excursion  productive  of  much 
oral  philosophising  on  his  part,  and  of  the  composition  of 
the  Lines  on  ascending  the  Broclceyi,  not  one  of  the  hap- 
piest efforts  of  his  muse.  As  to  the  philosophising,  "  he 
never,"  says  one  of  his  companions  on  this  trip,  *'  appeared 
to  tire  of  mental  exercise ;  talk  seemed  to  him  a  peren- 
nial pastime,  and  his  endeavours  to  inform  and  amuse  us 
ended  only  with  the  cravings  of  hunger  or  the  fatigue  of 
a  long  march,  from  which  neither  his  conversational  pow- 
ers nor  his  stoicism  could  protect  himself  or  us."  It 
speaks  highly  for  the  matter  of  Coleridge's  allocutions  that 
such  incessant  outpourings  during  a  mountaineering  tramp 
appear  to  have  left  no  lasting  impression  of  boredom  be- 
liind  them.     The  holiday  seems  to  have  been  thoroughly 


IT.]  RETURN  TO  ENGLAND.  71 

enjoyed  by  the  whole  party,  and  Coleridge,  at  any  rate, 
had  certainly  earned  it.  For  once,  and  it  is  almost  to  be 
feared  for  the  last  time  in  his  life,  he  had  resisted  his 
besetting  tendency  to  dispersiveness,  and  constrained  his 
intelligence  to  apply  itself  to  one  thing  at  a  time.  lie 
had  come  to  Germany  to  acquire  the  language,  and  to 
learn  what  of  German  theology  and  metaphysics  he  might 
find  worth  the  study,  and  his  five  months'  steady  pursuit 
of  the  former  object  had  been  followed  by  another  four 
months  of  resolute  prosecution  of  the  latter.  He  attended 
the  lectures  of  Professor  Blumenbach,  and  obtained  through 
a  fellow-student  notes  from  those  of  Eichhorn.  He  suf- 
fered no  interruption  in  his  studies,  unless  we  are  to  ex- 
cept a  short  visit  from  Wordsworth  and  his  sister,  who 
had  spent  most  of  their  stay  abroad  in  residence  at  Gos- 
iar;  and  he  appears,  in  short,  to  have  made  in  every  way 
the  best  use  of  his  time.  On  24th  June,  1799,  he  gave 
his  leave-taking  supper  at  Gottingen,  replying  to  the  toast 
of  his  health  in  fluent  German  but  with  an  execrable  ac- 
cent; and  the  next  day,  presumably,  he  started  on  his 
homeward  journey. 

His  movements  for  the  next  few  months  are  incor- 
rectly stated  in  most  of  the  brief  memoirs  j)refixed  to 
the  various  editions  of  the  poet's  works — their  writers 
having,  it  is  to  be  imagined,  accepted  without  examina- 
tion a  misplaced  date  of  Mr.  Gillman's.  It  is  not  the  fact 
that  Coleridge  "  returned  to  England  after  an  absence  of 
fourteen  months,  and  arrived  in  London  the  27th  of  No- 
vember." His  absence  could  not  have  lasted  longer  than 
a  year,  for  we  know  from  the  evidence  of  Miss  Words- 
worth's diary  that  he  was  exploring  the  Lake  country 
(very  likely  for  the  first  time)  in  company  with  her  broth- 
er and  herself  in  the  month   of  September,  1799.     The 


72  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

probability  is  that  be  arrived  in  England  early  in  July,  and 
immediately  thereupon  did  the  most  natural  and  proper 
thing  to  be  done  under  the  circumstances  —  namely,  re- 
turned to  his  wife  and  children  at  Nether  Stowey,  and  re- 
mained there  for  the  next  two  months,  after  which  he  set 
off  with  the  AVordsworths,  then  still  at  Alfoxden,  to  visit  the 
district  to  which  the  latter  had  cither  already  resolved  upon, 
or  were  then  contemplating,  the  transfer  of  their  abode. 

The  27th  of  November  is  no  doubt  the  correct  date  of 
his  arrival  in  London,  though  not  "from  abroad."  And 
his  first  six  weeks  in  the  metropolis  were  spent  in  a  very 
characteristic  fashion  —  in  the  preparation,  namely,  of  a 
work  which  he  pronounced  with  perfect  accurac}'^  to  be 
destined  to  fall  dead  from  the  press.  He  shut  himself  up 
in  a  lodging  in  Buckingham  Street,  Strand,  and  by  the 
end  of  the  above-mentioned  period  he  had  completed 
his  admirable  translation  of  Wallenstein,  in  itself  a  perfect, 
and  indeed  his  most  perfect  dramatic  poem.  The  manu- 
script of  this  English  version  of  Schiller's  drama  was  pur- 
chased by  Messrs.  Longman  under  the  condition  that  the 
translation  and  the  original  should  appear  at  the  same 
time.  Very  few  copies  were  sold,  and  the  publishers,  in- 
different to  Coleridge's  advice  to  retain  the  unsold  copies 
until  the  book  should  become  fashionable,  disposed  of  them 
as  waste  paper.  Sixteen  years  afterwards,  on  the  publica- 
tion of  Christahel,  they  were  eagerly  sought  for,  and  the 
few  remaining  copies  doubled  their  price.  It  was  while 
engaged  upon  this  work  that  he  formed  that  connection 
with  political  journalism  which  lasted,  though  with  inter- 
missions, throughout  most  of  the  remainder  of  his  life. 
His  early  poetical  pieces  had,  as  we  have  seen,  made  their 
first  appearance  in  the  Morning  Post,  but  hitherto  that 
newspaper  had  received  no  prose  contribution  from   his 


IV.]  LOXDOX.  Td 

pen.  His  engagement  -with  its  proprietor,  Mr.  Daniel 
Stuart,  to  whom  he  had  been  introduced  during  a  visit  to 
London  in  1797,  was  to  contribute  an  occasional  copy  of 
verses  for  a  stipulated  annual  sum  ;  and  some  dozen  or  so 
of  his  poems  (notably  among  them  the  ode  to  France  and 
the  two  strange  pieces.  Fire,  Famine,  and  Slaughter  and 
The  Devil's  Thoughts)  had  entered  the  world  in  this  way 
during  the  years  1798  and  1799. 

Misled  by  the  error  above  corrected,  the  writers  of  some 
of  the  brief  memoirs  of  Coleridge's  life  represent  him  as 
having  sent  verse  contributions  to  the  Morning  Post  from 
Germany  in  1799;  but  as  the  earliest  of  these  only  ap- 
peared in  August  of  that  year,  there  is  no  .reason  to  sup- 
pose that  any  of  them  were  written  before  his  return  to 
England.  The  longest  of  the  serious  pieces  is  the  well- 
known  Ode  to  Georgiana,  Duchess  of  Devonshire,  which 
cannot  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  happiest  of  Coleridge's 
productions.  Its  motive  is  certainly  a  little  slight,  and  its 
sentiment  more  than  a  little  overstrained.  The  noble  en- 
thusiasm of  the  noble  lady  who,  "  though  nursed  in  pomp 
and  pleasure,"  could  yet  condescend  to  "  hail  the  platform 
wild  where  once  the  Austrian  fell  beneath  the  shaft  of 
Tell,"  hardly  strikes  a  reader  of  the  present  day  as  remark- 
able enough  to  be  worth  "  gushing  "  over ;  and  when  the 
poet  goes  on  to  suggest  as  the  explanation  of  Georgiana's 
having  "  learned  that  heroic  measure"  that  the  "Whig  great 
lady  had  suckled  her  own  children,  we  certainly  seem  to 
have  taken  the  fatal  step  beyond  the  sublime !  It  is  to  be 
presumed  that  Tory  great  ladies  invariably  employed  the 
services  of  a  wet-nurse,  and  hence  failed  to  win  the  same 
tribute  from  the  angel  of  the  earth,  who,  usually,  while  he 

guides 

"His  chariot-planet  round  the  goal  of  day, 

All  trembling  gazes  on  the  eye  of  God," 


li  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

but  who  on  this  occasion  "  a  moment  turned  his  awful 
face  away  "  to  gaze  approvingly  on  the  high-born  mother 
who  had  so  conscientiously  performed  her  maternal  duties. 
Very  different  is  the  tone  of  this  poem  from  that  of 
the  two  best  known  of  Coleridge's  lighter  contributions 
to  the  Morning  Post.  The  most  successful  of  these,  how- 
ever, from  the  journalistic  point  of  view,  is  in  a  literary 
sense  the  less  remarkable.  One  is  indeed  a  little  aston- 
ished to  find  that  a  public,  accustomed  to  such  admirable 
political  satire  as  the  Anti-Jacobin,  should  have  been  so 
much  taken  as  it  seems  to  have  been  by  the  rough  ver- 
sification and  somewhat  clumsy  sarcasm  of  the  DeviVs 
Thoughts.  The  poem  created  something  like  a  furore, 
and  sold  a  large  reissue  of  the  number  of  the  Morning 
Post  in  which  it  appeared.  Nevertheless  it  is  from  the 
metrical  point  of  view  doggerel,  as  indeed  the  author 
admits,  three  of  its  most  smoothly-flowing  stanzas  being 
from  the  hand  of  Southey,  while  there  is  nothing  in  its 
boisterous  political  drollery  to  put  its  composition  beyond 
the  reach  of  any  man  of  strong  partisan  feelings  and  a 
turn  for  street-humour.  Fire,  Famine,  and  Slaughter,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  literary  in  every  sense  of  the  word,  re- 
quiring indeed,  and  very  urgently,  to  insist  on  its  charac- 
ter as  literature,  in  order  to  justify  itself  against  the  charge 
of  inhuman  malignity.  Despite  the  fact  that  "  letters  four 
do  form  his  name,"  it  is  of  course  an  idealised  statesman, 
and  not  the  I'cal  flesh  and  blood  Mr.  Pitt,  whom  the  sister 
furies.  Fire,  Famine,  and  Slaughter,  extol  as  their  patron 
in  these  terrible  lines.  The  poem  must  be  treated  as  what 
lawyers  call  an  "  A.  B.  case."  Coleridge  must  be  supposed 
to  be  lashing  certain  alphabetical  symbols  arranged  in  a 
certain  order.  This  idealising  process  is  perfectly  easy  and 
familiar  to  everybody  with  the  literary  sense.     The  de- 


IV.]  LONDON.  T5 

duction  for  '*  poetic  license  "  is  just  as  readily,  though  it 
does  not,  of  course,  require  to  be  as  frequently,  made  with 
respect  to  the  hyperbole  of  denunciation  as  with  respect 
to  that  of  praise.  Nor  need  we  doubt  that  this  deduction 
had  in  fact  been  made  by  all  intelligent  readers  long  be- 
fore that  agitating  dinner  at  Mr.  Sotheby's,  which  Cole- 
ridge describes  with  such  anxious  gravity  in  his  apologetic 
preface  to  the  republication  of  the  lines.  On  the  whole 
one  may  pretty  safely  accept  De  Quincey's  view  of  the 
true  character  of  this  incident  as  related  by  him  in  his 
own  inimitable  fashion,  namely,  that  it  was  in  the  nature 
of  an  elaborate  hoax,  played  off  at  the  poet's  expense.* 
The  malice  of  the  piece  is,  as  De  Quincey  puts  it,  quite 
obviously  a  "  malice  of  the  understanding  and  fancy,"  and 

^  After  quoting  the  two  concluding  lines  of  the  poem,  "Fire's" 
rebuke  of  her  inconstant  sisters,  in  the  words 
"I  alone  am  faithful,  I 
Cling  to  him  everlastingly," 
De  Quincey  proceeds :  "  The  sentiment  is  diabolical ;  and  the  ques- 
tion argued  at  the  London  dinner-table  (Mr.  Sotheby's)  was  '  Could 
the  writer  have  been  other  than  a  devil  ?'  .  .  .  Several  of  the  great 
guns  among  the  literary  body  were  present — in  particular  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  and  he,  we  believe,  with  his  usual  good  nature,  took  the  apolo- 
getic side  of  the  dispute ;  in  fact,  he  was  in  the  secret.  Nobody  else, 
barring  the  author,  knew  at  first  whose  good  name  was  at  stake. 
The  scene  must  have  been  high.  The  company  kicked  about  the 
poor  diabolic  writer's  head  as  though  it  had  been  a  tennis  -  ball. 
Coleridge,  the  yet  unknown  criminal,  absolutely  perspired  and  fumed 
in  pleading  for  the  defendant ;  the  company  demurred ;  the  orator 
grew  urgent ;  wits  began  to  smofce  the  case  as  an  active  verb,  the 
advocate  to  smoke  as  a  neuter  verb ;  the  '  fun  grew  fast  and  furi- 
ous,' until  at  length  the  delinquent  arose,  burning  tears  in  his  eyes, 
and  confessed  to  an  audience  now  bursting  with  stifled  laughter  (but 
whom  he  supposed  to  be  bursting  with  fiery  indignation),  '  Lo,  I  am 
he  that  wrote  it.'  " 


16  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

not  of  the  heart.  There  is  significance  in  the  mere  fact 
that  the  poem  was  deliberately  published  by  Coleridge  two 
years  after  its  composition,  when  the  vehemence  of  his 
political  animosities  had  much  abated.  Written  in  1796, 
it  did  not  appear  in  the  Morning  Post  till  January,  1798. 
He  was  now,  however,  about  to  draw  closer  his  connec- 
tion with  the  newspaper  press.  Soon  after  his  return  from 
Germany  he  was  solicited  to  "  undertake  the  literary  and 
political  department  in  the  Morning  Post,''''  and  acceded  to 
the  proposal  *'  on  condition  that  the  paper  should  thence- 
forward be  conducted  on  certain  fixed  and  announced  prin- 
ciples, and  that  he  should  be  neither  obliged  nor  requested 
to  deviate  from  them  in  favour  of  any  party  or  any  event." 
Accordingly,  from  December,  1799,  until  about  midsummer 
of  1800,  Coleridge  became  a  regular  contributor  of  politi- 
cal articles  to  this  journal,  sometimes  to  the  number  of  two 
or  three  in  one  week.  At  the  end  of  the  period  of  six 
months  he  quitted  London,  and  his  contributions  became 
necessarily  less  frequent,  but  they  were  continued  (though 
with  two  appai'ent  breaks  of  many  months  in  duration)* 
until  the  close  of  the  year  1802.  It  would  seem,  however, 
that  nothing  but  Coleridge's  own  disinclination  prevented 
this  connection  from  taking  a  form  in  which  it  would  have 
profoundly  modified  his  whole  future  career.  In  a  letter 
to  Mr,  Poole,  dated  March,  1800,  he  informs  his  friend  that 
if  he  "  had  the  least  love  of  money  "  he  could  "  make  sure 
of  £2000  a  year,  for  that  Stuart  had  offered  him  half  shares 

'  Sic  ill  Ussai/.H  on  his  own  Times,  by  S.  T.  C,  the  collection  of  her 
father's  articles  made  by  Mrs.  Nelson  (Sara)  Coleridge ;  but  without 
attributing  strange  error  to  Coleridge's  own  estimate  (in  the  Bio- 
graphia  Literaria)  of  the  amount  of  his  journalistic  work,  it  is  im- 
possible to  believe  that  this  collection,  forming  as  it  does  but  two 
small  volumes,  and  a  portion  of  a  third,  is  anything  like  complete. 


ivO  COLERIDGE  AS  JOURNALIST.  7*; 

in  bis  two  papers,  the  Morning  Post  and  the  Courier,  if 
he  would  devote  himself  to  them  in  conjunction  with  their 
proprietor.  But  I  told  him,"  he  continues,  "  that  I  would 
not  give  up  the  country  and  tlie  lazy  reading  of  old  folios 
for  two  thousand  times  two  thousand  pounds — in  short, 
that  beyond  £350  a  year  I  considered  money  a  real  evil." 
Startlingly  liberal  as  this  offer  will  appear  to  the  journalist, 
it  seems  really  to  have  been  made.  For,  writing  long  af- 
terwards to  Mr.  Nelson  Coleridge,  Mr.  Stuart  says  :  "  Could 
Coleridge  and  I  place  ourselves  thirty  years  back,  and  he 
be  so  far  a  man  of  business  as  to  write  three  or  four  hours 
a  day,  there  is  nothing  I  would  not  pay  for  his  assistance. 
I  would  take  him  into  partnership,  and  I  would  enable  him 
to  make  a  large  fortune."  Nor  is  there  any  reason  to  think 
that  the  bargain  would  have  been  a  bad  one  for  the  pro- 
prietor from  the  strictly  commercial  point  of  view.  Cole- 
ridge in  later  years  may  no  doubt  have  overrated  the  effect 
of  his  own  contributions  on  the  circulation  of  the  Morning 
Post,  but  it  must  have  been  beyond  question  considerable, 
and  would  in  all  likelihood  have  become  far  greater  if  he 
could  have  been  induced  to  devote  himself  more  closely  to 
the  work  of  journalism.  For  the  fact  is — and  it  is  a  fact 
for  which  the  current  conception  of  Coleridge's  intellectu- 
al character  does  not  altogether  prepare  one — that  he  was 
a  workman  of  the  very  first  order  of  excellence  in  this  cu- 
rious craft.  The  faculties  which  go  to  the  attainment  of 
such  excellence  are  not  perhaps  among  the  highest  distinc- 
tions of  the  human  mind,  but,  such  as  they  are,  they  are 
specific  and  well  marked ;  they  are  by  no  means  the  nec- 
essary accompaniments  even  of  the  most  conspicuous  liter- 
ary power,  and  they  are  likely  rather  to  suffer  than  to  profit 
by  association  with  great  subtlety  of  intellect  or  wide  phil- 
osophic grasp.     It  is  not  to  the  advantage  of  the  journal- 


78  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

ist,  as  such,  that  he  should  see  too  many  things  at  a  time, 
or  too  far  into  any  one  thing,  and  even  the  gifts  of  an  ac- 
tive imagination  and  an  abundant  vocabulary  are  each  of 
them  likely  to  prove  a  snare.  To  be  wholly  successful, 
the  journalist — at  least  the  English  journalist — must  not  be 
too  eloquent,  or  too  Avitty,  or  too  humorous,  or  too  ingen- 
ious, or  too  profound.  Yet  the  English  reader  likes,  or 
thinks  he  likes,  eloquence ;  he  has  a  keen  sense  of  humour, 
and  a  fair  appreciation  of  wit ;  and  he  would  be  much  hurt 
if  he  were  told  that  ingenuity  and  profundity  were  in  them- 
selves distasteful  to  him.  How,  then,  to  give  him  enough 
of  these  qu^itiesto  please  and  not  enough  to  offend  him — 
as  much  eloquence  as  will  stir  his  emotions,  but  not  enough 
to  arouse  his  distrust;  as  much  wit  as  will  carry  home  the 
argument,  but  not  enough  to  make  him  doubt  its  sincerity; 
as  much  humour  as  will  escape  the  charge  of  levity ;  as  much 
ingenuity  as  can  be  displayed  without  incurring  suspicion, 
and  as  much  profundity  as  may  impress  without  bewil- 
dering? This  is  a  problem  which  is  fortunately  simpli- 
fied for  most  journalists  by  the  fact  of  their  possessing 
these  qualities  in  no  more  than,  if  in  so  much  as,  the  min- 
imum required.  But  Coleridge,  it  must  be  remembered, 
possessed  most  of  them  in  embarrassing  superfluity.  Not 
all  of  them  indeed,  for,  though  he  could  be  witty  and  at 
times  humorous,  his  temptations  to  excess  in  these  re- 
spects were  doubtless  not  considerable.  But  as  for  his 
eloquence,  he  was  from  his  youth  upwards  Isceo  torren- 
tior,  his  dialectical  ingenuity  was  unequalled,  and  in  dis- 
quisition of  the  speculative  order  no  man  was  so  apt  as 
lie  to  penetrate  more  deeply  into  his  subject  than  most  of 
his  readers  would  care  to  follow  him.  A  j^riori,  there- 
fore, one  Avould  have  expected  that  Coleridge's  instincts 
would  have  led  liim  to  rl.etorise  too  much  in  his  diction, 


IV.]  COLERIDGE  AS  JOURNALIST.  19 

to  refine  too  mucli  in  his  arguments,  and  to  philosophise 
too  much  in  his  reflections,  to  have  hit  the  popular  taste 
as  a  journalist,  and  that  at  the  age  of  eight -and -twenty 
he  would  have  been  unable  to  subject  these  tendencies 
either  to  the  artistic  repression  of  the  maturer  writer  or  to 
the  tactical  restraints  of  the  trained  advocate.  This  emi- 
nently natural  assumption,  however,  is  entirely  rebutted  by 
the  facts.  Nothing  is  more  remarkable  in  Coleridge's  con- 
tributions to  the  Morning  Post  than  their  thoroughly  work- 
manlike character  from  the  journalistic  point  of  view,  their 
avoidance  of  "  viewiness,"  their  strict  adherence  to  the  one 
or  two  simple  points  which  he  is  endeavouring  at  any  par- 
ticular juncture  in  politics  to  enforce  upon  his  readers,  and 
the  steadiness  with  which  he  keeps  his  own  and  his  read- 
ers' attention  fixed  on  the  special  political  necessities  of 
the  hour.  His  articles,  in  short,  belong  to  that  valuable 
class  to  which,  while  it  gives  pleasure  to  the  cultivated 
reader,  the  most  commonplace  and  Philistine  man  of  busi- 
ness cannot  refuse  the,  to  him,  supreme  praise  of  being 
eminently  "practical."  They  hit  the  nail  on  the  head  in 
nearly  every  case,  and  they  take  the  plainest  and  most  di- 
rect route  to  their  point,  dealing  in  rhetoric  and  metaphor 
only  so  far  as  the  strictly  "business"  ends  of  the  argu- 
ment appear  to  require.  Nothing,  for  instance,  could  have 
been  better  done,  better  reasoned  and  written,  more  skil- 
fully adapted  throughout  to  the  English  taste,  than  Cole- 
ridge's criticism  (31st  Dec,  1799)  on  the  new  constitution 
established  by  Bonaparte  and  Sieves  on  the  foundation  of 
the  Consulate,  with  its  eighty  senators,  the  "creatures  of 
a  renegade  priest,  himself  the  creature  of  a  foreign  mer- 
cenary, its  hundred  tribunes  who  are  to  talk  and  do  noth- 
ing, and  its  three  hundred  legislators  whom  the  constitu- 
tion orders  to  be  silent."     What  a  ludicrous  Purgatory, 


80  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

adds  be,  "  for  three  hundred  Frenchmen  !"  Very  vigorous, 
moreover,  is  he  on  the  ministerial  rejection  of  the  French 
proposals  of  peace  in  1800,  arguing  against  the  continu- 
ance of  the  war  on  the  very  sound  anti -Jacobin  ground 
that  if  it  were  unsuccessful  it  would  inflame  French  ambi- 
tion anew,  and,  if  successful,  repeat  the  experience  of  the 
results  of  rendering  France  desperate,  and  simply  reani- 
mate Jacobinism. 

Effective  enough  too,  for  the  controversial  needs  of  the 
moment,  was  the  argument  that  if  France  were  known,  as 
Ministers  pretended,  to  be  insincere  in  soliciting  peace, 
"  Ministers  would  certainly  treat  with  her,  since  they  would 
again  secure  the  support  of  the  British  people  in  the  war, 
and  expose  the  ambition  of  the  enemy  ;"  and  that,  there- 
fore, the  probability  was  that  the  British  Government  knew 
France  to  he  sincere,  and  shrank  from  negotiation  lest  it 
should  expose  their  own  desire  to  prosecute  the  war.'  Most 
happy,  again,  is  his  criticism  of  Lord  Grenville's  note,  with 
its  references  to  the  unprovoked  aggression  of  France  (in 
the  matter  of  the  opening  of  the  Scheldt,  etc.)  as  the  sole 
cause  and  origin  of  the  war.  "  If  this  were  indeed  true, 
in  what  ignorance  must  not  Mr.  Pitt  and  Mr.  Windhapa 
have  kept  the  poor  Duke  of  Portland,  who  declared  in  the 
House  of  Lords  that  the  cause  of  the  war  was  the  main- 
tenance of  the  Christian  religion  ?" 

To  add  literary  excellence  of  the  higher  order  to  the 
peculiar  qualities  which  give  force  to  the  newspaper  arti- 

'  Alas,  that  the  facts  should  be  so  merciless  to  the  most  excellent 
arguments  !  Colerklge  could  not  foresee  that  Napoleon  would,  years 
afterwards,  admit  in  his  own  Memoirs  the  insincerity  of  his  overtures. 
"I  had  need  of  war;  a  treaty  of  peace  .  .  .  would  have  withered  ev- 
ery imagination."  And  when  Mr.  Pitt's  answer  arrived,  "it  filled 
me  with  a  secret  satisfaction." 


IV.]  COLERIDGE  AS  JOURNALIST.  81 

cle  is  for  a  jonrnalist,  of  course,  a  "  counsel  of  perfection  ;" 
but  it  remains  to  be  remarked  that  Coleridge  did  make 
this  addition  in  a  most  conspicuous  manner.  Mrs.  H.  N. 
Coleridge's  three  volumes  of  her  father's  Essays  on  his 
oivn  Times  deserve  to  live  as  literature  apart  altogether 
from  their  merits  as  journalism.  Indeed,  among  the  arti- 
cles in  the  Morninff  Post  between  1799  and  1802  may  be 
found  some  of  the  finest  specimens  of  Coleridge's  maturer 
prose  style.  The  character  of  Pitt,  which  appeared  on 
19th  March,  1800,  is  as  remarkable  for  its  literary  merits 
as  it  is  for  the  almost  humorous  political  perversity  which 
would  not  allow  the  Minister  any  single  merit  except  that 
which  he  owed  to  the  sedulous  rhetorical  training  received 
by  him  from  his  father,  viz.^  "  a  premature  and  unnatural 
dexterity  in  the  combination  of  words."  '  The  letters  to 
Fox,  again,  though  a  little  artificialised  perhaps  by  remi- 
niscences of  Junius,  are  full  of  weight  and  dignity.  But 
by  far  the  most  piquant  illustration  of  Coleridge's  peculiar 
power  is  to  be  found  in  the  comparison  between  his  own 
version  of  Pitt's  speech  of  iVth  Februar)^1800,  on  the 
continuance  of  the  war,  with  the  report  of  it  which  ap- 
peared in  the  2'imcs  of  that  date.     With  the  exception  of 

'  The  following  passage,  too,  is  curious  as  showing  how  polemics, 
like  history,  repeat  themselves.  "  As  his  reasonings  were,  so  is  bis 
eloquence.  One  character  pervades  his  whole  being.  Words  on 
words,  finely  arranged,  and  so  dexterously  consequent  that  the  whole 
bears  the  semblance  of  argument  and  still  keeps  awake  a  sense  of 
surprise ;  but,  when  all  is  done,  nothing  rememberable  has  been  said ; 
no  one  philosophical  remark,  no  one  image,  not  even  a  pointed  apho- 
rism. Not  a  sentence  of  Mr.  Pitt's  has  ever  been  quoted,  or  formed 
the  favourite  i)hrase  of  the  day — a  thing  unexampled  in  any  man  of 
equal  reputation."  With  the  alteration  of  one  word  —  the  proper 
name — this  passage  might  have  been  taken  straight  from  some  po- 
litical diatribe  of  to-dav. 


82  .  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

a  few  unwarranted  elaborations  of  the  arguments  here  and 
tliere,  the  two  speeches  are  in  substance  identical ;  but  the 
effect  of  the  contrast  between  the  Minister's  cold  state- 
paper  periods  and  the  life  and  glow  of  the  poet-journalist's 
style  is  almost  comic.  Mr.  Gillman  records  that  Canning, 
calling  on  business  at  the  editor's,  inquired,  as  others  had 
done,  who  was  the  reporter  of  the  speech  for  the  Morning 
Post,  and,  on  being  told,  remarked  drily  that  the  report 
"did  more  credit  to  his  head  than  to  his  memory." 

On  the  whole  one  can  well  understand  Mr,  Stuart's  anx- 
iety to  secure  Coleridge's  permanent  collaboration  with 
him  in  the  business  of  journalism  ;  and  it  would  be  possi- 
ble to  maintain,  with  less  of  paradox  than  may  at  first  sight 
appear,  that  it  would  have  been  better  not  only  for  Cole- 
ridge himself  but  for  the  world  at  large  if  the  editor's  ef- 
forts had  been  successful.  It  would  indeed  have  been  bow- 
ing the  neck  to  the  yoke ;  but  there  are  some  natures  upon 
which  constraint  of  that  sort  exercises  not  a  depressing  but 
a  steadying  influence.  What,  after  all,  would  the  loss  in 
hours  devoted  to  a  comparatively  inferior  class  of  literary 
labour  have  amounted  to  when  compared  with  the  gain  in 
much-needed  habits  of  method  and  regularity,  and — more 
valuable  than  all  to  an  intellect  like  Coleridge's  —  in  the 
constant  reminder  that  human  life  is  finite  and  the  mate- 
rials of  human  speculation  infinite,  and  that  even  a  world- 
embracing  mind  must  apportion  its  labour  to  its  day? 
There  is,  however,  the  great  question  of  health  to  be  con- 
sidered— the  question,  as  every  one  knows,  of  Coleridge's 
whole  career  and  life.  If  health  was  destined  to  give  way, 
in  any  event — if  its  collapse,  in  fact,  was  simply  the  cause 
of  all  the  lamentable  external  results  which  followed  it, 
while  itself  due  only  to  predetermined  internal  conditions 
over  which  the  sufferer  had  no  control — then  to  be  sure 


IT.]  REMOVAL  TO  THE  LAKES.  83 

cadit  qucestio.  At  London  or  at  the  Lakes,  among  news- 
paper files  or  old  folios,  Coleridge's  life  would  in  that  case 
have  run  the  same  sad  course ;  and  his  rejection  of  Mr. 
Stuart's  offer  becomes  a  matter  of  no  particular  interest  to 
disappointed  posterity.  But  be  that  as  it  may,  the  "  old 
folios"  won  the  day.  In  the  summer  of  1800  Coleridge 
quitted  London,  and  having  wound  up  his  affairs  at  his 
then  place  of  residence,  removed  with  his  wife  and  chil- 
dren to  a  new  and  beautiful  home  in  that  English  Lake 
country  with  which  his  name  was  destined,  like  those  of 
Southey  and  Wordsworth,  to  be  enduringly  associated. 


CHAPTER  V. 

LIFE  AT  KESWICK. — SECOND  PAKT  OP  "  CHBISTABEL." — FAIL- 
ING HEALTH.  —  RESORT  TO  OPIUM.  —  THE  "ODE  TO  DEJEC- 
TION."— INCREASING  RESTLESSNESS.— VISIT  TO  MALTA. 

[1800-1804.] 

We  are  now  approaching  tlie  turning-point,  moral  and 
physical,  of  Coleridge's  career.  The  next  few  years  de- 
termined not  only  his  destiny  as  a  writer  but  his  life  as 
a  man.  Between  his  arrival  at  Keswick  in  the  summer 
of  1800  and  his  departure  for  Malta  in  the  spring  of  1804 
that  fatal  change  of  constitution,  temperament,  and  habits 
which  governed  the  whole  of  his  subsequent  history  had 
fully  established  itself.  Between  these  two  dates  he  was 
transformed  from  the  Coleridge  of  whom  his  young  fellow- 
students  in  Germany  have  left  us  so  pleasing  a  picture  into 
the  Coleridge  whom  distressed  kinsmen,  alienated  friends, 
and  a  disappointed  public  were  to  have  before  them  for 
the  remainder  of  his  days.  Here,  then,  at  Keswick,  and 
in  these  first  two  or  three  years  of  the  century — here  or 
nowhere  is  the  key  to  the  melancholy  mystery  to  be  found. 
It  is  probable  that  only  those  who  have  gone  with  some 
minuteness  into  the  facts  of  this  singular  life  are  aware 
how  great  was  the  change  effected  during  this  very  short 
period  of  time.  When  Coleridge  left  London  for  the  Lake 
country,  he  had  not  completed  his  eight -and -twentieth 


CHAP,  v.]  LIFE  AT  KESWICK.  85 

year.  Before  he  was  thirty  he  wrote  that  Ode  to  Dejec- 
tion in  wliich  his  spiritual  and  moral  losses  are  so  patheti- 
cally bewailed.  His  health  and  spirits,  his  will  and  habits, 
may  not  have  taken  any  unalterable  bent  for  the  worse 
until  1804,  the  year  of  his  departure  for  Malta — the  date 
which  I  have  thought  it  safest  to  assign  as  the  definitive 
close  of  the  earlier  and  happier  period  of  his  life ;  but 
undoubtedly  the  change  had  fully  manifested  itself  more 
than  two  years  before.  And  a  very  great  and  painful 
one  it  assuredly  was.  We  know  from  the  recorded  evi- 
dence of  Dr.  Carrlyon  and  others  that  Coleridge  was  full 
of  hope  and  gaiety,  full  of  confidence  in  himself  and  of 
interest  in  life  during  his  few  months'  residence  in  Ger- 
many. The  annus  mirabilis  of  his  poetic  life  was  but  two 
years  behind  him,  and  his  achievements  of  1797-98  seemed 
to  him  but  a  mere  earnest  of  what  he  was  destined  to  ac- 
complish. His  powers  of  mental  concentration  were  un- 
diminished, as  his  student  days  at  Gottingen  sufficiently 
proved ;  his  conjugal  and  family  affections,  as  Dr.  Carr- 
lyon notes  for  us,  were  still  unimpaired ;  his  own  verse 
gives  signs  of  a  home-sickness  and  a  yearning  for  bis  own 
fireside  which  were  in  melancholy  contrast  with  the  rest- 
lessness of  his  later  years.  Nay,  even  after  his  return  to 
England,  and  during  the  six  months  of  his  regular  work 
on  the  Morning  Post,  the  vigour  of  his  political  articles 
entirely  negatives  the  idea  that  any  relaxation  of  intel- 
lectual energy  had  as  yet  set  in.  Yet  within  six  months 
of  his  leaving  London  for  Keswick  there  begins  a  progres- 
sive decline  in  Coleridge's  literary  activity  in  every  form. 
The  second  part  of  Christahel,  beautiful  but  inferior  to  the 
first,  was  composed  in  the  autumn  of  1800,  and  for  the 
next  two  years,  so  far  as  the  higher  forms  of  literature  arc 
concerned,  "  the  rest  is  silence."     The  author  of  the  prcf- 


86  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

atory  memoir  in  the  edition  of  Coleridge's  Poetical  and 
Dramatic  Works  (\SSQ)  enumerates  some  half-dozen  slight 
pieces  contributed  to  the  Morning  Post  in  1801,  but  de- 
clares that  Coleridge's  poetical  contributions  to  this  paper 
during  1802  were  "very  rich  and  varied,  and  included 
the  magnificent  ode  entitled  Dejection.''''  Only  the  latter 
clause  of  this  statement  is  entitled,  I  think,  to  command 
our  assent.  Varied  though  the  list  may  be,  it  is  hardly 
to  be  described  as  "  rich."  It  covers  only  about  seven 
weeks  in  the  autumn  of  1802,  and,  with  the  exception  of 
the  Lovers'  Resolution  and  the  "  magnificent  ode  "  referred 
to,  the  pieces  are  of  the  shortest  and  slightest  kind.  Nor 
is  it  accurate  to  say  that  the  "political  articles  of  the 
same  period  were  also  numerous  and  important."  On  the 
contrary,  it  would  appear  from  an  examination  of  Mrs.  H. 
N.  Coleridge's  collection  that  her  father's  contributions  to 
the  Post  between  his  departure  from  London  and  the  au- 
tumn of  1802  were  few  and  intermittent,  and  in  August, 
1803,  the  proprietorship  of  that  journal  passed  out  of  Mr. 
Stuart's  hands.  It  is,  in  short,  I  think,  impossible  to  doubt 
that  very  shortly  after  his  migration  to  the  Lake  country 
he  practically  ceased  not  only  to  write  poetry  but  to  pro- 
duce any  raentionablc  quantity  of  complete  work  in  the 
prose  form.  His  mind,  no  doubt,  was  incessantly  active 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  deplorable  period  upon  which 
we  are  now  entering;  but  it  seems  pretty  certain  that  its 
activity  was  not  poetic  nor  even  critical,  but  purely  philo- 
sophical, and  that  the  products  of  that  activity  went  exclu- 
sively to  marginalia  and  the  pages  of  note-books. 

Yet  unfortunately  we  have  almost  no  evidence,  personal 
or  other,  from  Avhich  we  can  with  any  certainty  construct 
the  psychological — if  one  should  not  rather  say  the  physio- 
logical, or  better  still,  perhaps,  the  pathological — history  of 


v.]  GRETA  HALL.  87 

this  cardinal  epoch  in  Coleridge's  life.  Miss  Wordsworth's 
diary  is  nearly  silent  about  him  for  the  next  few  years ;  he 
was  living  indeed  some  dozen  miles  from  her  brother  at 
Grasmere,  and  they  could  not  therefore  have  been  in  daily 
intercourse.  Southey  did  not  come  to  the  Lakes  till  1803, 
and  the  records  of  his  correspondence  only  begin  there- 
fore from  that  date.  Mr.  Cottle's  Reminiscences  are  here  a 
blank ;  Charles  Lamb's  correspondence  yields  little ;  and 
though  De  Quincey  has  plenty  to  say  about  this  period  in 
his  characteristic  fashion,  it  must  have  been  based  upon 
pure  gossip,  as  he  cites  no  authorities,  and  did  not  himself 
make  Coleridge's  acquaintance  till  six  years  afterwards. 
This,  however,  is  at  least  certain,  that  his  gloomy  accounts 
of  his  own  health  begin  from  a  period  at  which  his  satis- 
faction with  his  new  abode  was  still  as  fresh  as  ever.  The 
house  which  he  had  taken,  now  historic  as  the  residence  of 
two  famous  Englishmen,  enjoyed  a  truly  beautiful  situa- 
tion and  the  command  of  a  most  noble  view.  It  stood  in 
the  vale  of  Derwentwater,  on  the  bank  of  the  river  Greta, 
and  about  a  mile  from  the  lake.  When  Coleridge  first 
entered  it,  it  was  uncompleted,  and  an  arrangement  was 
made  by  which,  after  completion,  it  was  to  be  divided  be- 
tween the  tenant  and  the  landlord,  a  Mr.  Jackson.  As  it 
turned  out,  however,  the  then  completed  portion  was  shared 
by  them  in  common,  the  other  portion,  and  eventually  the 
whole,  being  afterwards  occupied  by  Southey. 

In  April,  1801,  some  eight  or  nine  months  after  his  tak- 
ing possession  of  Greta  Hall,  Coleridge  thus  describes  it  to 
its  future  occupant : 

"  Our  house  stands  gu  a  low  hill,  the  whole  front  of  which  is  one 
field  and  an  enormous  garden,  nine-tenths  of  which  is  a  nursery  gar- 
den.    Behind  the  house  is  an  orchard  and  a  small  wood  on  a  steep 
slope,  at  the  foot  of  which  is  the  river  Greta,  which  winds  round  and 
G       5 


88  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

iatches  the  evening's  light  in  the  front  of  the  house.  In  front  we 
have  a  giant  camp — an  encamped  army  of  tent-like  mountains  which, 
by  au  inverted  arcli,  gives  a  view  of  anotlier  vale.  On  our  right  the 
lovely  vale  and  the  wedge-shaped  lake  of  Bassenthwaite  ;  and  on  our 
left  Derwentwater  and  LoJore  full  in  view,  and  the  fantastic  moun- 
tains of  Borrowdale.  Beliind  is  the  massy  Skiddaw,  smooth,  green, 
high,  with  two  chasms  and  a  tent-like  ridge  in  the  larger.  A  fairer 
scene  you  have  not  seen  in  all  your  wanderings." 

There  is  here  no  note  of  discontent  with  the  writer's  sur- 
roundings ;  and  yet,  adds  Mr.  Cuthbert  Southey  in  his  L'lfe 
and  Correspondence  of  his  father,  the  remainder  of  this  let- 
ter was  filled  by  Coleridge  with  "  a  most  gloomy  account 
of  his  health."  Southey  writes  him  in  reply  that  he  is 
convinced  that  his  friend's  "  complaint  is  gouty,  that  good 
living  is  necessary,  and  a  good  climate,"  In  July  of  the 
same  year  he  received  a  visit  from  Southey  at  Greta  Hall, 
and  one  from  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb  in  the  following 
summer,  and  it  is  probable  that  during  such  intervals  of 
pleasurable  excitement  his  health  and  spirits  might  tempo- 
rarily rally.  But  henceforward  and  until  his  departure  for 
Malta  we  gather  nothing  from  any  source  as  to  Coleridge's 
normal  condition  of  body  and  mind  which  is  not  unfa- 
vourable, and  it  is  quite  certain  that  he  had  long  before 
1804  enslaved  liimself  to  that  fatal  drug  which  was  to 
remain  liis  tyrant  for  the  rest  of  his  days. 

When,  then,  and  how  did  this  slavery  begin?  What 
was  the  precise  date  of  Coleridge's  first  experiences  of 
opium,  and  what  the  original  cause  of  his  taking  it  ?  Within 
what  time  did  its  use  become  habitual  ?  To  what  extent 
was  the  decline  of  his  health  the  effect  of  the  evil  habit, 
and  to  what,  if  any,  extent  its  cause  ?  And  how  far,  if  at 
all,  can  the  deterioration  of  his  character  and  powers  be 
attributed  to  a  decay  of  physical  constitution,  brought 
about  by  influences  beyond  the  sufferer's  own  control  ? 


v.]  OPIUM-EATING.  89 

Could  every  one  of  these  questions  be  completely  an- 
swered, we  should  be  in  a  position  to  solve  the  very  obscure 
and  painful  problem  before  us ;  but  though  some  of  them 
can  be  answered  with  more  or  less  approach  to  complete- 
ness, there  is  only  one  of  them  which  can  be  finally  disposed 
of.  It  is  certain,  and  it  is  no  doubt  matter  for  melancholy 
satisfaction  to  have  ascertained  it,  that  Coleridge  first  had 
recourse  to  opium  as  an  anodyne.  It  was  Nature's  revolt 
from  pain,  and  not  her  appetite  for  pleasure,  which  drove 
him  to  the  drug;  and  though  De  Quincey,  with  his  almost 
comical  malice,  remarks  that,  though  Coleridge  began  in 
the  desire  to  obtain  relief,  "there  is  no  proof  that  he  did 
not  end  in  voluptuousness,"  there  is  on  the  other  hand  no 
proof  whatever  that  he  did  so  end — until  the  hahit  was 
formed.  It  is  quite  consistent  with  probability,  and  only 
accords  with  Coleridge's  own  express  afiirmations,  to  be- 
lieve that  it  was  the  medicinal  efficacy  of  opium,  and  this 
quality  of  it  alone,  which  induced  him  to  resort  to  it  again 
and  again  until  his  senses  contracted  that  well-known  and 
insatiable  craving  for  the  peculiar  excitement,  "voluptuous" 
only  to  the  initiated,  which  opium-intoxication  creates.  But 
let  Coleridge  speak  on  this  point  for  himself.  Writing  in 
April,  1826,  he  says: 

"I  wrote  a  few  stanzas  threc-and-twenty  years  ago,  soon  after  my 
eyes  had  been  opened  to  the  true  nature  of  the  habit  into  which  I 
had  been  ignorantly  deluded  by  the  seeming  magic  effects  of  opium, 
in  the  sudden  removal  of  a  supposed  rheumatic  affection,  attended 
with  swellings  in  my  knees  and  palpitation  of  the  heart  and  pains  all 
over  me,  by  which  I  had  been  bedridden  for  nearly  six  months.  Un- 
happily among  my  neighbours'  and  landlord's  books  were  a  large 
number  of  medical  reviews  and  magazines.  I  had  always  a  fondness 
(a  common  case,  but  most  mischievous  turn  with  reading  men  who 
are  at  all  dyspeptic)  for  dabbling  in  medical  writings ;  and  in  one  ai 
these  reviews  I  met  a  case  which  I  fancied  very  like  my  own,  in  which 


90  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

a  cure  had  been  effected  by  the  Kendal  Black  Drop.  In  an  evil  hour 
I  procured  it :  it  worked  miracles  —  the  swellings  disappeared,  the 
pains  vanished.  I  was  all  alive,  and  all  around  me  being  as  ignorant 
as  myself,  nothing  could  exceed  my  triumph.  I  talked  of  nothing 
else,  prescribed  the  newly-discovered  panacea  for  all  complaints,  and 
carried  a  little  about  with  me  not  to  lose  any  opportunity  of  adminis- 
tering 'instant  relief  and  speedy  cure'  to  all  complainers,  stranger 
or  friend,  gentle  or  simple.  Alas  !  it  is  with  a  bitter  smile,  a  laugh 
of  gall  and  bitterness,  that  I  recall  this  period  of  unsuspecting  delu- 
sion, and  how  I  first  became  aware  of  the  Maelstrom,  the  fatal  whirl- 
pool to  which  I  was  drawing,  just  when  the  current  was  beyond  my 
strength  to  stem.  The  state  of  my  mind  is  truly  portrayed  in  the 
following  effusion,  for  God  knows  that  from  that  time  I  was  the 
victim  of  pain  and  terror,  nor  had  I  at  any  time  taken  the  flattering 
poison  as  a  stimulus  or  for  any  craving  after  pleasurable  sensation." 

The  "  effusion "  in  question  has  parted  company  with 
the  autobiographical  note,  and  the  author  of  the  prefatory 
memoir  above  quoted  conjectures  it  to  have  been  a  little 
j)oem  entitled  the  Visionary  Hope j  but  I  ara  myself  of 
opinion,  after  a  careful  study  of  both  pieces,  that  it  is  more 
probably  the  Pains  of  Sleep,  which  moreover  is  known  to 
have  been  written  in  1803.  But  whichever  it  be,  its  date 
is  fixed  in  that  year  by  the  statement  in  the  autobiograph- 
ical note  of  1826  that  the  stanzas  referred  to  in  it  were 
written  "  twenty-three  years  ago."  Thus,  then,  we  have 
the  two  facts  established,  that  the  opium-taking  habit  had 
its  origin  in  a  bodily  ailment,  and  that  at  some  time  in  1803 
that  habit  had  become  confirmed.  The  disastrous  experi- 
ment in  amateur  therapeutics,  which  was  the  means  of  im- 
planting it,  could  not  have  taken  place,  according  to  the 
autobiographical  note,  until  at  least  six  months  after  Cole- 
ridge's arrival  at  Keswick,  and  perhaps  not  for  some  months 
later  yet.  At  any  rate,  it  seems  tolerably  certain  that  it 
was  not  till  the  spring  of  1801,  when  the  climate  of  the 


v.]  OPIUM-EATING.  91 

Lake  country  first  began  to  tell  unfavourably  on  his  health, 
that  the  "  Kendal  Black  Drop  "  was  taken.  Possibly  it  may 
have  been  about  the  time  (April,  1801)  when  he  wrote  the 
letter  to  Southey  which  has  been  quoted  above,  and  which, 
it  will  be  remembered,  contained  "  so  gloomy  an  account 
of  his  health."  How  painfully  ailing  he  was  at  this  time 
we  know  from  a  variety  of  sources,  from  some  of  which  we 
also  gather  that  he  must  have  been  a  sufferer  in  more  or  less 
serious  forms  from  his  boyhood  upwards.  Mr.  Gillman,  for 
instance,  who  speaks  on  this  point  with  the  twofold  author- 
ity of  confidant  and  medical  expert,  records  a  statement  of 
Coleridge's  to  the  effect  that,  as  a  result  of  such  schoolboy 
imprudences  as  "swimming  over  the  New  River  in  my 
clothes  and  remaining  in  them,  full  half  the  time  from  sev- 
enteen to  eighteen  was  passed  by  me  in  the  sick  ward  of 
Christ's  Hospital,  afilicted  with  jaundice  and  rheumatic 
fever."  From  these  indiscretions  and  their  consequences 
"  may  be  dated,"  Mr.  Gillman  thinks,  "  all  his  bodily  suffer- 
ings in  future  life."  That  he  was  a  martyr  to  periodical 
attacks  of  rheumatism  for  some  years  before  his  migration 
to  Keswick  is  a  conclusion  resting  upon  something  more 
than  conjecture.  The  Ode  to  the  Departing  Year  (1796) 
was  written,  as  he  has  himself  told  us,  under  a  severe  at- 
tack of  rheumatism  in  the  head.  In  1797  he  describes  him- 
self in  ill  health,  and  as  forced  to  retire  on  that  account  to 
the  "lonely  farmhouse  between  Porlock  and  London  on 
the  Exmoor  confines  of  Somerset  and  Devonshire,"  where 
Kubla  Khan  was  written.' 

'  Were  it  not  for  Coleridge's  express  statement  that  he  first  took 
opium  at  Keswick,  one  would  be  inclined  to  attribute  the  gorgeous 
but  formless  imagery  of  that  poem  to  the  effects  of  the  stimulant. 
It  is  certainly  very  like  a  metrical  version  of  one  of  the  pleasant  va. 
riety  of  opium-dreams  described  in  De  Quincey's  poetic  prose. 


92  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

Thus  much  is,  moreover,  certain,  that  whatever  were 
Coleridge's  health  and  habits  during  the  first  two  years  of 
his  residence  at  Keswick,  his  career  as  a  poet — that  is  to 
say,  as  a  poet  of  the  first  order — was  closed  some  months 
before  that  period  had  expired.  The  ode  entitled  Dejec- 
tion, to  Avhich  reference  has  so  often  been  made,  was  writ- 
ten on  the  4th  of  April,  1802,  and  the  evidential  impor- 
tance which  attaches,  in  connection  with  the  point  under 
inquiry,  to  this  singularly  pathetic  utterance  has  been  al- 
most universally  recognised.  Coleridge  has  himself  cited 
its  most  significant  passage  in  the  Biographia  Literaria  as 
supplying  the  best  description  of  his  mental  state  at  the 
time  when  it  was  written.  De  Quincey  quotes  it  with  ap- 
propriate comments  in  his  Coleridge  and  Opium-eating.  Its 
testimony  is  reverently  invoked  by  the  poet's  son  in  the  in- 
troductory essay  prefixed  by  him  to  his  edition  of  his  fa- 
ther's works.  The  earlier  stanzas  are,  however,  so  neces- 
sary to  the  comprehension  of  Coleridge's  mood  at  this  time 
that  a  somewhat  long  extract  must  be  made.  In  the  open- 
ing stanza  he  expresses  a  longing  that  the  storm  which  cer- 
tain atmospheric  signs  of  a  delusively  calm  evening  appear 
to  promise  might  break  forth,  so  that 

"Those  sounds  which  oft  have  raised  me,  whilst  they  awed, 
And  sent  my  soul  abroad, 
Might  now  perhaps  their  wonted  impulse  give, 
Might  startle  this  dull  pain,  and  make  it  move  and  live." 

And  thus,  with  ever -deepening  sadness,  the  poem  pro- 
ceeds : 

"  A  grief  without  a  pang,  void,  dark,  and  drear, 
A  stifled,  drowsy,  unimpassioncd  grief, 
Which  finds  no  natural  outlet,  no  relief 
In  word,  or  sigli,  or  tear — 


v.]  "DEJECTIOX."  93 

0  Lady !  in  this  wan  and  heartless  mood, 
To  other  thoughts  by  yonder  throstle  woo'd, 

All  this  long  eve,  so  balmy  and  serene, 
Have  I  been  gazing  on  the  western  sky, 

And  its  peculiar  tint  of  yellow  green : 
And  still  I  gaze — and  with  how  blank  an  eye ! 
And  those  thin  clouds  above,  in  flakes  and  bars^ 
That  give  away  their  motion  to  the  stars; 
Those  stars,  that  glide  behind  them  or  between, 
Now  sparkling,  now  bedimmed,  but  always  seen*. 
Yon  crescent  Moon  as  fixed  as  if  it  grew 
In  its  own  cloudless,  starless  lake  of  blue; 

1  see  them  all  so  excellently  fair, 

I  see,  not  feel  how  beautiful  they  are ! 

"My  genial  spirits  fail. 

And  what  can  these  avail 
To  lift  the  smothering  weight  from  off  my  breast? 

It  were  a  vain  endeavour, 

Though  I  should  gaze  forever 
On  that  green  light  that  lingers  in  the  west : 
I  may  not  hope  from  outward  forms  to  win 
The  passion  and  the  life,  whose  fountains  are  within. 

*'  0  Lady  !  we  receive  but  what  we  give. 
And  in  our  life  alone  does  nature  live: 
Ours  is  her  wedding  garment,  ours  her  shroud  ! 

And  would  we  aught  behold,  of  higher  worth, 
Than  that  inanimate  cold  world  allowed 
To  the  poor  loveless  ever-anxious  crowd, 

Ah !  from  the  soul  itself  must  issue  forth, 
A  light,  a  glory,  a  fair  luminous  cloud 

Enveloping  the  earth — 
And  from  the  soul  itself  must  there  be  sent 

A  sweet  and  potent  voice,  of  its  own  birth. 
Of  all  sweet  sounds  the  life  and  clement ! 

"  0  pure  of  heart !  thou  need'st  not  ask  of  me 
Wliat  this  strong  nmsic  in  the  soul  may  be ! 


94  COLERIDGE.  [cuap. 

What,  and  wherein  it  doth  exist, 

This  liglit,  this  glory,  this  fair  luminous  mist, 

This  beautiful  and  beauty-making  power. 

Joy,  ■virtuous  Lady  !  Joy  that  ne'er  was  given, 
Save  to  the  i)ure,  and  in  their  purest  hour, 
Life,  and  Life's  effluence,  cloud  at  once  and  shower, 
Joy,  Lady  !  is  the  spirit  and  the  power. 
Which,  wedding  Nature  to  us,  gives  in  dower 

A  new  Earth  and  new  Heaven, 
Undreamt  of  by  the  sensual  and  the  proud — 
Joy  is  the  sweet  voice,  Joy  the  luminous  cloud — 

We  in  ourselves  rejoice  ! 
And  thence  flows  all  that  charms  or  ear  or  sight, 

All  melodies  the  echoes  of  that  voice, 
All  colours  a  suffusion  from  that  light." 

And  then  follows  the  much  quoted,  profoundly  touch- 
ing, deeply  significant  stanza  to  which  we  have  referred : 

"  There  was  a  time  when,  though  my  path  was  rough, 

This  joy  within  me  dallied  with  distress, 
And  all  misfortunes  were  but  as  the  stuff 

Whence  Fancy  made  me  dreams  of  happiness : 
For  hope  grew  round  me,  like  the  twining  vine. 
And  fruits,  and  foliage,  not  my  own,  seemed  mine. 
But  now  afflictions  bow  me  down  to  earth  : 
Nor  care  I  that  they  rob  me  of  my  mirth, 

But  0  !  each  visitation 
Suspends  what  nature  gave  me  at  my  birth. 

My  shaping  spirit  of  Imagination. 
For  not  to  think  of  what  I  needs  must  feel. 

But  to  be  still  and  patient,  all  I  can ; 
And  haply  by  abstruse  research  to  steal 

From  my  own  nature  all  the  natural  Man — 

This  my  sole  resource,  my  only  plan : 
Till  that  which  suits  a  part  infects  the  whole, 
And  now  is  almost  grown  the  habit  of  my  Soul." 

Sadder  lines  than  these  were  never  perhaps  written  by 
any  poet  in  description  of  his  own  feelings.     And  what 


v.]  "DEJECTION."  95 

gives  them  their  peculiar  sadness — as  also,  of  course,  tlieir 
special  biographical  value — is  that  they  are  not,  like  Shel- 
ley's similarly  entitled  stanzas,  the  mere  expression  of  a 
passing  mood.  They  are  the  record  of  a  life  change,  a 
veritable  threnody  over  a  spiritual  death.  For  there  can 
be  no  doubt — his  whole  subsequent  history  goes  to  show 
it — that  Coleridge's  "  shaping  spirit  of  Imagination  "  was 
in  fact  dead  when  these  lines  were  written.  To  a  man 
of  stronger  moral  fibre  a  renascence  of  the  poetical  in- 
stinct in  other  foi-ms  might,  as  I  have  suggested  above, 
been  possible ;  but  the  poet  of  Christabel  and  the  Ancient 
Mariner  was  dead.  The  metaphysician  had  taken  his 
place,  and  was  striving,  in  abstruse  research,  to  live  in 
forgetfulness  of  the  loss.  Little  more,  that  is  to  say,  than 
a  twelvemonth  after  the  composition  of  the  second  part 
of  Christabel  the  impulse  which  gave  birth  to  it  had  passed 
away  forever.  Opium-taking  had  doubtless  begun  by  this 
time — may  conceivably  indeed  have  begun  nearly  a  year 
before — and  the  mere  mood  of  the  poem,  the  temporary 
phase  of  feeling  which  directed  his  mind  inwards  into 
deeper  reflections  on  its  permanent  state,  is  no  doubt 
strongly  suggestive,  in  its  excessive  depression,  of  the  ter- 
rible reaction  which  is  known  to  follow  upon  opium-ex- 
citement. But,  I  confess,  it  seems  to  me  improbable  that 
even  the  habitual  use  of  the  stimulant  for  so  comparative- 
ly short  a  time  as  twelve  months  could  have  produced  so 
profound  a  change  in  Coleridge's  intellectual  nature.  I 
cannot  but  think  that  De  Quincey  overstates  the  case  in 
declaring  that  "  opium  killed  Coleridge  as  a  poet,"  though 
it  may  well  be  that,  after  the  collapse  of  health,  which 
appears  to  me  to  have  been  the  real  causa  causans  in  the 
matter,  had  killed  the  poet  as  we  know  him,  opium  pre- 
vented his  resurrection  in  another  and  it  may  be  but  little 
5* 


96  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

inferior  form.  On  the  whole,  in  fact,  the  most  probable 
account  of  this  all-important  era  in  Coleridge's  life  appears 
to  me  to  be  this:  that  in  the  course  of  1801,  as  he  was 
approaching  his  thirtieth  year,  a  distinct  change  for  the 
worse  —  precipitated  possibly,  as  Mr.  Gillman  thinks,  by 
the  climate  of  his  new  place  of  abode — took  place  in  his 
constitution;  that  bis  rheumatic  habit  of  body,  and  the 
dyspeptic  trouble  by  which  it  was  accompanied,  became 
confirmed ;  and  that  the  severe  attacks  of  the  acute  form 
of  the  malady  which  he  underwent  produced  such  a  per- 
manent lowering  of  his  vitality  and  animal  spirits  as,  Ji7'st, 
to  extinguish  the  creative  impulse,  and  then  to  drive  him 
to  the  physical  anodyne  of  opium  and  to  the  mental  stim- 
ulant of  metaphysics. 

From  the  summer  of  1801,  at  any  rate,  his  malaise, 
both  of  mind  and  body,  appears  to  have  grown  apace. 
Repeated  letters  from  Southey  allow  us  to  see  liow  deeply 
concerned  he  was  at  this  time  about  his  friend's  condition. 
Plans  of  foreign  travel  are  discussed  between  them,  and 
Southey  endeavours  in  vain  to  spur  his  suffering  and  de- 
pressed correspondent  to  "  the  assertion  of  his  supremacy  " 
in  some  new  literary  work.  But,  with  the  exception  of 
his  occasional  contributions  to  the  press,  whatever  he  com- 
mitted to  paper  during  these  years  exists  only,  if  at  all,  in 
a  fragmentary  form.  And  his  restlessness,  continually  on 
the  increase,  appears  by  the  end  of  1802  to  have  become 
ungovernable.  In  November  of  that  year  he  eagerly  ac- 
cepted an  offer  from  Thomas  Wedgwood  to  become  liis 
companion  on  a  tour,  and  he  spent  this  and  the  greater 
part  of  the  following  month  in  South  Wales  with  some 
temporary  advantage,  it  would  seem,  to  his  health  and 
spirits.  "  Coleridge,"  writes  Mr.  Wedgwood  to  a  friend, 
"is  all   kindness   to  me,  and   in    ))rodiuions   favour  here. 


v.]  RESTLESSJ^ESS.  97 

He  is  quite  easy,  cheerful,  and  takes  great  pains  to  make 
himself  pleasant.  He  is  willing,  indeed  desirous,  to  ac- 
company me  to  any  part  of  the  glohe."  "  Coll  and  I," 
he  writes  on  another  occasion,  the  abbreviation  of  name 
having  been  suggested  to  him  by  Coleridge  himself,  "har- 
monise amazingly,"  and  adds  that  his  companion  "takes 
long  rambles,  and  writes  a  great  deal."  But  the  fact  that 
such  changes  of  air  and  scene  produced  no  permanent  ef- 
fect upon  the  invalid  after  his  return  to  his  own  home 
appears  to  show  that  now,  at  any  rate,  his  fatal  habit 
had  obtained  a  firm  hold  upon  liim.  And  his  "writing 
a  great  deal  resulted "  only  in  the  filling  of  many  note- 
books, and  perhaps  the  sketching  out  of  many  of  those 
vast  schemes  of  literary  labour  of  which  he  was  destined 
to  leave  so  remarkable  a  collection  at  his  death.  One 
such  we  find  him  forwarding  to  Southcy  in  the  August 
of  1803 — the  plan  of  a  Bibliotheca  Britannica,  or  "His- 
tory of  British  Literature,  bibliographical,  biographical,  and 
critical,"  in  eight  volumes.  The  first  volume  was  to  con- 
tain a  "complete  history  of  all  Welsh,  Saxon,  and  Erse  books 
that  are  not  translations,  but  the  native  growth  of  Britain  ;" 
to  accomplish  which,  writes  Coleridge,  "I  will  with  great 
pleasure  join  you  in  learning  Welsh  and  Erse."  The  sec- 
ond volume  was  to  contain  the  history  of  English  poetry 
and  poets,  including  "  all  prose  truly  poetical."  The  third 
volume  "  English  prose,  considered  as  to  style,  as  to  elo- 
quence, as  to  general  impressiveness ;  a  history  of  styles 
and  manners,  their  causes,  their  birthplace  and  parentage, 
their  analysis."  The  fourth  volume  would  take  up  "the 
history  of  metaphysics,  theology,  medicine,  alchemy  ;  com- 
mon, canon,  and  Roman  law  from  Alfred  to  Henry  VH." 
The  fifth  would  "carry  on  metaphysics  and  ethics  to  the 
present  day  in  the  first  half,  and  comprise  in  the  second 


98  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

half  the  theology  of  all  the  reformers."  In  the  sixth  and 
seventh  volumes  were  to  be  included  "  all  the  articles  you 
(Southey)  can  get  on  all  the  separate  arts  and  sciences  that 
have  been  treated  of  in  books  since  the  Reformation  ;  and 
by  this  time,"  concludes  the  enthusiastic  projector,  "  the 
book,  if  it  answered  at  all,  would  have  gained  so  high  a 
reputation  that  you  need  not  fear  having  whom  you  liked 
to  write  the  different  articles — medicine,  surgery,  chemis- 
try, etc. ;  navigation,  travellers'  voyages,  etc.,  etc."  There 
is  certainly  a  melancholy  humour  in  the  formulation  of  so 
portentous  a  scheme  by  a  man  who  was  at  this  moment 
wandering  aimlessly  among  the  lakes  and  mountains,  una- 
ble to  settle  down  to  any  definite  piece  of  literary  work, 
or  even  to  throw  off  a  fatal  habit,  which  could  not  fail,  if 
persevered  in,  to  destroy  all  power  of  steady  application  in 
the  future.  That  neither  the  comic  nor  the  pathetic  ele- 
ment in  the  situation  was  lost  upon  Southey  is  evident 
from  his  half -sad,  half  -  satirical,  wholly  winning  reply. 
"  Your  plan,"  he  writes,  "  is  too  good,  too  gigantic,  quite 
beyond  my  powers.  If  you  had  my  tolerable  state  of 
health  and  that  love  of  steady  and  productive  employment 
which  is  now  grown  into  a  necessary  habit  with  me,  if  you 
were  to  execute  and  would  execute  it,  it  would  be  beyond 
all  doubt  the  most  valuable  work  of  any  age  or  any  coun- 
try ;  but  I  cannot  fill  up  such  an  outline.  No  man  can 
better  feel  where  he  fails  than  I  do,  and  to  rely  upon  you 
for  whole  quartos !  Dear  Coleridge,  the  smile  that  comes 
with  that  thought  is  a  very  melancholy  one ;  and  if  Edith 
saw  me  now  she  would  think  my  eyes  were  weak  again, 
when  in  truth  the  humour  that  covers  them  springs  from 
another  cause."  A  few  weeks  after  this  interchange  of 
correspondence  Coleridge  was  once  again  to  prove  how 
far  he  was  from  possessing  Southey's  "  tolerable  state  of 


v.]  INCREASING  RESTLESSNESS.  99 

health."  Throughout  the  whole  of  this  year  he  had  been 
more  restless  than  ever.  In  January,  1803,  we  find  him 
staying  with  Southey  at  Bristol,  "suffering  terribly  from 
the  climate,  and  talking  of  going  abroad."  A  week  later 
he  is  at  Stowey,  planning  schemes,  not  destined  to  be  real- 
ised, of  foreign  travel  with  Wedgwood.  Returning  again 
to  Keswick,  he  started,  after  a  few  months'  quiescence,  on 
IStli  August,  in  company  with  Wordsworth  and  his  sister, 
for  a  tour  in  Scotland,  but  after  a  fortnight  he  found  him- 
self too  ill  to  proceed.  The  autumn  rains  set  in,  and  "  poor 
Coleridge,"  writes  Miss  Wordsworth,  "  being  very  unwell, 
determined  to  send  his  clothes  to  Edinburgh,  and  make 
the  best  of  his  way  thither,  being  afraid  to  face  much  "wet 
weather  in  an  open  carriage."  It  is  possible,  however,  that 
his  return  to  Keswick  may  have  been  hastened  by  the  cir- 
cumstance that  Southey,  who  had  paid  a  brief  visit  to  the 
Lake  country  two  years  before,  was  expected  in  a  few 
days  at  the  house  which  was  destined  to  be  his  abode  for 
the  longest  portion  of  his  life.  He  arrived  at  Greta  Ilall 
on  7th  September,  1803,  and  from  time  to  time  during  the 
next  six  months  his  correspondence  gives  us  occasional 
glimpses  of  Coleridge's  melancholy  state.  At  the  end  of 
December,  his  health  growing  steadily  worse,  he  conceived 
the  project  of  a  voyage  to  Madeira,  and  quitted  Keswick 
with  the  intention,  after  paying  a  short  visit  to  the  Words- 
worths,  of  betaking  himself  to  London  to  make  prepara- 
tions. His  stay  at  Grasmcre,  however,  was  longer  than  he 
had  counted  on.  "  He  was  detained  for  a  month  by  a  se- 
vere attack  of  illness,  induced,  if  his  description  is  to  be 
relied  on,  by  the  use  of  narcotics.'     Unsuspicious  of  the 

»  See  Miss  Meteyard  {A  Group  of  Englishmen,  p.  223).  Her  evi- 
dence, however,  on  any  point  otherwise  doubtful  in  Coleridge's  his- 
tory should  be  received  witli  caution,  as  her  estimate  of  the  poet 
certftlnlv  errs  soniewliat  on  the  side  of  excessive  harshness. 


100-  COLERIDGE.  [chap.  v. 

cause,  Mrs.  and  Miss  Wordsworth  nursed  liim  with  the 
tenderest  affection,  while  the  poet  himself,  usually  a  parsi- 
monious man,  forced  upon  him,  to  use  Coleridge's  own 
words,  a  hundred  pounds  in  the  event  of  his  going  to 
Madeira,  and  his  friend  Stuart  offered  to  befriend  him." 
From  Grasmere  he  went  to  Liverpool,  where  he  spent  a 
pleasant  week  with  his  old  Unitarian  friend,  Dr.  Cromp- 
ton,  and  arrived  in  London  at  the  close  of  1803.  Here, 
however,  his  plans  were  changed.  Malta  was  substituted 
for  Madeira,  in  response  to  an  invitation  from  his  friend 
Mr,,  afterwards  Sir  John,  Stoddart,  then  resident  as  judge 
in  the  Mediterranean  island.  By  12th  March,  as  we  gather 
from  the  Southey  correspondence,  the  change  of  arrange- 
ments had  been  made.  Two  days  afterwards  he  receives 
a  letter  of  valediction  from  his  "old  friend  and  brother" 
at  Greta  Hall,  and  on  2d  April,  1804,  he  sailed  from  Eng- 
land in  the  Speedwell,  dropping  anchor  sixteen  days  later 
in  Valetta  harbour. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

STAY  AT  MALTA. — ITS  INJURIOUS  EFFECTS. — RETURN  TO  ENG- 
LAND.—  MEETING  WITH  DE  QUINCEY.  —  RESIDENCE  IN  LON- 
DON.— FIRST  SERIES  OF  LECTURES. 

[1806-1809.] 

Never  was  human  being  destined  so  sadly  and  signally  to 
illustrate  the  caelum  non  animum  aphorism  as  the  unhappy 
passenger  on  the  Speedwell.  Southey  shall  describe  his 
condition  when  he  left  England;  and  his  own  pathetic 
lines  to  William  Wordsworth  will  picture  him  to  us  on  his 
return.  "  You  are  in  great  measure  right  about  Coleridge," 
writes  the  former  to  his  friend  Riclcman,  "  he  is  worse  in 
body  than  you  seem  to  believe ;  but  the  main  cause  lies 
in  his  own  management  of  himself,  or  rather  want  of  man- 
agement. His  mind  is  in  a  perpetual  St.  Vitus's  dance — 
eternal  activity  without  action.  At  times  he  feels  morti- 
fied that  he  should  have  done  so  little,  but  this  feeling 
never  produces  any  exertion.  '  I  will  begin  to-morrow,' 
he  says,  and  thus  he  has  been  all  his  life  long  letting  to- 
day slip.  He  has  had  no  heavy  calamities  in  life,  and  so 
contrives  to  be  miserable  about  trifles.  Poor  fellow,  there 
is  no  one  thing  which  gives  me  so  much  pain  as  the  wit- 
nessing such  a  waste  of  unequalled  powers."  Then,  after 
recalling  the  case  of  a  highly  promising  schoolfellow,  who 
had  made  shipwreck  of  his  life,  and  whom  "a  few  indi> 


102  ^COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

viduals  only  remember  with  a  sort  of  horror  and  affection, 
which  just  serves  to  make  them  melancholy  whenever  they 
think  of  him  or  mention  his  name,"  he  adds :  "  This  will 
not  be  the  case  with  Coleridge ;  the  disjecta  membra  will 
be  found  if  he  does  not  die  early :  but  having  so  much  to 
do,  so  many  errors  to  weed  out  of  the  world  which  he  is 
capable  of  eradicating,  if  he  does  die  without  doing  his 
work,  it  would  half  break  ray  heart,  for  no  human  being 
has  had  more  talents  allotted."  Such  being  his  closest 
friend's  account  of  him,  and  knowing,  as  we  now  do  (what 
Southey  perhaps  had  no  suspicion  of  at  the  time),  the 
chief  if  not  the  sole  or  original  cause  of  his  morally  nerve- 
less condition,  it  is  impossible  not  to  feel  that  he  did  the 
worst  possible  thing  for  himself  in  taking  this  journey  to 
Malta.  In  quitting  England  he  cut  himself  off  from  those 
last  possibilities  of  self  -  conquest  which  the  society  and 
counsels  of  his  friends  might  otherwise  have  afforded  him, 
and  the  consequences  were,  it  is  to  be  feared,  disastrous. 
After  De  Quincey's  incredibly  cool  assertion  that  it  was 
"  notorious  that  Coleridge  began  the  use  of  opium,  not  as 
a  relief  from  any  bodily  pain  or  nervous  irritations,  since 
his  constitution  was  strong  and  excellent  (!),  but  as  a  source 
of  luxurious  sensations,"  we  must  receive  anything  which 
he  has  to  say  on  this  particular  point  with  the  utmost 
caution ;  but  there  is  only  too  much  plausibility  in  his 
statement  that,  Coleridge  being  necessarily  thrown,  while 
at  Malta,  "  a  good  deal  upon  his  own  resources  in  the  nar- 
row society  of  a  garrison,  he  there  confirmed  and  cher- 
ished ...  his  habit  of  taking  opium  in  large  quantities." 
Contrary  to  his  expectations,  moreover,  the  Maltese  climate 
failed  to  benefit  him.  At  first,  indeed,  he  did  experience 
some  feeling  of  relief,  but  afterwards,  according  to  Mr.  Gill- 
man,  he  spoke  of  his  rheumatic  limbs  as  "  lifeless  tools," 


VI.]  STAY  AT  MALTA.  103 

and  of   the  "  violent  pains  in  his  bowels,  which  neither 
opium,  ether,  nor  peppermint  combined  could  relieve." 

Occupation,  however,  was  not  wanting  to  him,  if  occu- 
pation could  have  availed  in  the  then  advanced  stage  of 
his  case.  He  early  made  the  acquaintance  of  the  gov- 
ernor of  the  island.  Sir  Alexander  Ball,  who,  having  just 
lost  his  secretary  by  death,  requested  Coleridge  to  under- 
take that  official's  duties  until  his  successor  should  be  ap- 
pointed. By  this  arrangement  the  governor  and  the  pub- 
lic service  in  all  likelihood  profited  more  than  the  provi- 
sional secretary;  for  Coleridge's  literary  abilities  proved 
very  serviceable  in  the  department  of  diplomatic  corre- 
spondence. The  dignities  of  the  office,  Mr.  Gillman  tells 
us,  no  doubt  on  Coleridge's  own  authority,  "  he  never  at- 
tempted to  support ;  he  was  greatly  annoyed  at  what  he 
thought  its  unnecessary  parade,  and  he  petitioned  Sir  Al- 
exander Ball  to  be  relieved  from  it."  The  purely  mechan- 
ical duties  of  the  post,  too,  appear  to  have  troubled  him. 
He  complains,  in  one  of  the  journals  which  he  kept  dur- 
ing this  period,  of  having  been  "  for  months  past  inces- 
santly employed  in  official  tasks,  subscribing,  examining, 
administering  oaths,  auditing,  etc."  On  the  whole  it 
would  seem  that  the  burden  of  his  secretarial  employ- 
ment, though  doubtless  it  would  have  been  found  light 
enough  by  any  one  accustomed  to  public  business,  was 
rather  a  weariness  to  the  flesh  than  a  distraction  to  the 
mind ;  while  in  the  meantime  a  new  symptom  of  disorder 
— a  difficulty  of  breathing,  to  which  he  was  always  after- 
wards subject — began  to  manifest  itself  in  his  case.  Prob- 
ably he  was  glad  enough — relieved,  in  more  than  one  sense 
of  the  word — when,  in  the  autumn  of  1805,  the  new  sec- 
retary arrived  at  Malta  to  take  his  place. 

On  27th  September  Coleridge  quitted  the  island  on  his 
H 


104  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

homeward  journey  via  Italy,  stopping  for  a  short  time  at 
Syracuse  on  his  way.  At  Naples,  which  he  reached  on  the 
15th  of  December,  he  made  a  longer  stay,  and  in  Rome  his 
sojourn  lasted  some  months.  Unfortunately,  for  a  reason 
which  will  presently  appear,  there  remains  no  written  rec- 
ord of  his  impressions  of  the  Eternal  City ;  and  though 
Mr.  Gillman  assures  us  that  the  gap  is  "partly  filled  by  his 
own  verbal  account,  repeated  at  various  times  to  the  writer 
of  this  memoir,"  the  public  of  to-day  is  only  indebted  to 
"the  writer  of  this  memoir"  for  the  not  very  startling 
information  that  Coleridge,  "  while  in  Rome,  was  actively 
employed  in  visiting  the  great  works  of  art,  statues,  pict- 
ures, buildings,  palaces,  etc.  etc.,  observations  on  which  he 
minuted  down  for  publication."  It  is  somewhat  more 
interesting  to  learn  that  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  many 
literary  and  artistic  notabilities  at  that  time  congregated 
there,  including  Tieck,  the  German  poet  and  novelist,  and 
the  American  painter  Alston,  to  whose  skill  we  owe  what 
is  reputed  to  be  the  best  of  his  many  not  easily  reconcilable 
portraits.  The  loss  of  his  Roman  memoranda  Avas  indi- 
rectly brought  about  by  a  singular  incident,  his  account  of 
which  has  met  with  some  undeserved  ridicule  at  the  hands 
of  Tory  criticism.  When  about  to  quit  Rome  for  England 
via  Switzerland  and  Germany  he  took  the  precaution  of 
inquiring  of  Baron  von  Humboldt,  brother  of  the  traveller, 
and  then  Prussian  Minister  at  the  Court  of  Rome,  whether 
the  proposed  route  was  safe,  and  was  by  him  informed 
that  he  would  do  well  to  keep  out  of  the  reach  of  Bona- 
parte, who  was  meditating  the  seizure  of  his  person.  Ac- 
cording to  Coleridge,  indeed,  an  order  for  his  arrest  had 
actually  been  transmitted  to  Rome,  and  he  was  only  saved 
from  its  execution  by  the  connivance  of  the  "good  old 
Pope,"  Pins  VII.,  who  sent  him  a  passport  and  counselled 


Ti.]  RETURN  TO  ENGLAND.  105 

liis  immediate  flight.  Hastening  to  Leghorn,  he  discovered 
an  American  vessel  ready  to  sail  for  England,  on  board  of 
which  he  embarked.  On  the  voyage  she  was  chased  by  a 
French  vessel,  which  so  alarmed  the  captain  that  he  com- 
pelled Coleridge  to  throw  his  papers,  including  these  pre- 
cious MSS.,  overboard.  The  wrath  of  the  First  Consul 
against  him  was  supposed  to  have  been  excited  by  his  con- 
tributions to  the  Morning  Post,  an  hypothesis  which  De 
Quincey  reasonably  finds  by  no  means  so  ridiculous  as  it 
appeared  to  a  certain  writer  in  Blackwood,  who  treated  it 
as  the  "  very  consummation  of  moon-struck  vanity,"  and 
compared  it  to  "  John  Dennis's  frenzy  in  retreating  from 
the  sea-coast  under  the  belief  that  Louis  XIV.  had  com- 
missioned commissaries  to  land  on  the  English  shore  and 
make  a  dash  at  his  person."  It  must  be  remembered, 
however,  that  Mr.  Fox,  to  whose  statement  on  such  a  point 
Napoleon  would  be  likely  to  attach  especial  weight,  had 
declared  in  the  House  of  Commons  that  the  rupture  of  the 
Peace  of  Amiens  had  been  brought  about  by  certain  essays 
in  the  Morning  Post,  and  there  is  certainly  no  reason  to 
believe  that  a  tyrant  whose  animosity  against  literary  or 
quasi -literary  assailants  ranged  from  Madame  de  Stael 
down  to  the  bookseller  Palm  would  have  regarded  a  man 
of  Coleridge's  reputation  in  letters  as  beneath  the  stoop  of 
his  vengeance. 

After  an  absence  of  two  years  and  a  half  Coleridge 
arrived  in  England  in  August,  1806.  That  his  then  condi- 
tion of  mind  and  body  was  a  profoundly  miserable  one, 
and  that  he  himself  was  acutely  conscious  of  it,  will  be 
seen  later  on  in  certain  extracts  from  his  correspondence ; 
but  his  own  Lines  to  William  Wordsicorth — lines  "  com- 
posed on  the  night  after  his  recitation  of  a  poem  on  the 
growth  of  an  individual   mind" — contain   an  even  more 


106  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

tragic  expression  of  his  state.  It  was  Wordworth's  pen- 
sive retrospect  of  their  earlier  years  together  which  awoke 
the  bitterest  pangs  of  self-reproach  in  his  soul,  and  wrung 
from  it  the  cry  which  follows : 

"  Ah !  as  I  listened  with  a  heart  forlorn 
The  pulses  of  my  being  beat  anew : 
And  even  as  life  returns  upon  the  drowned, 
Life's  joy  rekindling  roused  a  throng  of  pains — 
Keen  pangs  of  Love,  awakening  as  a  babe 
Turbulent,  with  an  outcry  in  the  heart ; 
And  fears  self-willed,  that  shunned  the  eye  of  hope; 
And  hope  that  scarce  would  know  itself  from  fear ; 
Sense  of  past  youth,  and  manhood  come  in  vain, 
And  genius  given,  and  knowledge  won  in  vain  ; 
And  all  which  I  had  culled  in  wood-walks  wild. 
And  all  which  patient  toil  had  reared,  and  all 
Commune  with  thee  had  opened  out — but  flowers 
Strewn  on  my  corse,  and  borne  upon  my  bier, 
In  the  same  coffin,  for  the  self-same  grave !" 

A  dismal  and  despairing  strain,  indeed,  but  the  situation 
unhappily  was  not  less  desperate.  We  are,  in  fact,  enter- 
ing upon  that  period  of  Coleridge's  life — a  period,  roughly 
speaking,  of  about  ten  years  —  which  no  admirer  of  his 
genius,  no  lover  of  English  letters,  no  one,  it  might  even  be 
said,  who  wishes  to  think  well  of  human  nature,  can  ever 
contemplate  without  pain.  His  history  from  the  day  of 
his  landing  in  England  in  August,  1806,  till  the  day  when 
he  entered  Mr.  Gilhnan's  house  in  1816,  is  one  long  and 
miserable  story  of  self-indulgence  and  self-reproach,  of  lost 
opportunities,  of  neglected  duties,  of  unfinished  undertak- 
ings. His  movements  and  his  occupation  for  the  first  year 
after  his  return  are  not  now  traceable  with  exactitude,  but 
his  time  was  apparently  spent  partly  in  London  and  partly 
at  Grasmere  and  Keswick,     When  in  London,  Mr.  Stuart, 


Ti.]  UNHAPPY  CONDITION.  107 

who  had  now  become  proprietor  of  the  Courier^  allowed 
him  to  occupy  rooms  at  the  ofBce  of  that  newspaper  to 
save  him  expense ;  and  Coleridge,  though  his  regular  con- 
nection with  the  Courier  did  not  begin  till  some  years 
afterwards,  may  possibly  have  repaid  the  accommodation 
by  occasional  contributions  or  by  assistance  to  its  editor 
in  some  other  form.  It  seems  certain,  at  any  rate,  that  if 
he  was  earning  no  income  in  this  way  he  was  earning  none 
at  all.  His  friend  and  patron,  Mr.  Thomas  Wedgwood, 
had  died  while  he  was  in  Malta;  but  the  full  pension  of 
£150  per  annum  bestowed  upon  him  by  the  two  brothers 
jointly  continued  to  be  paid  to  him  by  Josiah,  the  senior. 
Coleridge,  however,  had  landed  in  England  in  ignorance  of 
his  patron's  death.  He  had  wholly  neglected  to  keep  up 
any  correspondence  with  the  Wedgwoods  during  his  stay 
in  Malta,  and  though  "  dreadfully  affected  "  by  it,  as  Mr. 
Poole  records,  he  seems  to  have  allowed  nearly  a  year  to 
elapse  before  communicating  with  the  surviving  brother. 
The  letter  which  he  then  wrote  deserves  quotation,  nofc 
only  as  testimony  to  his  physical  and  pecuniary  condition 
on  his  arrival  in  England,  but  as  affording  a  distressing 
picture  of  the  morbid  state  of  his  emotions  and  the  enfee- 
bled condition  of  his  will.  "  As  to  the  reasons  for  ray  si- 
lence, they  are,"  he  incoherently  begins,  "impossible,  and 
the  numbers  of  the  causes  of  it,  with  the  almost  weekly 
expectation  for  the  last  eight  months  of  receiving  my 
books,  manuscripts,  etc.,  from  Malta,  has  been  itself  a  cause 
of  increasing  the  procrastination  which  constant  ill  health, 
despondency,  domestic  distractions,  and  embarrassment 
from  accidents,  equally  unconnected  with  my  will  or  con- 
duct" [every  cause  mentioned,  it  will  be  seen,  but  the  true 
one],  "  had  already  seated  deep  in  my  very  muscles,  as  it 
were.     I  do  not  mean  to  accuse  myself  of  idleness — I  have 


108  COLEKIDGE.  [chap. 

enough  of  self-crimination  without  adding  imaginary  arti- 
cles— but  in  all  things  that  affect  my  moral  feelings  I  have 
sunk  under  such  a  strange  cowardice  of  pain  that  I  have 
not  unfrequently  kept  letters  from  persons  dear  to  me  for 
weeks  together  unopened.  After  a  most  miserable  pas- 
sage from  Leghorn  of  fifty-five  days,  during  which  ray  life 
was  twice  given  over,  I  found  myself  again  in  my  native 
country,  ill,  penniless,  and  worse  than  homeless,  I  had 
been  near  a  month  in  the  country  before  I  ventured  or 
could  summon  courage  enough  to  ask  a  question  concern- 
ing you  and  yours,  and  yet  God  Almighty  knows  that  ev- 
ery hour  the  thought  had  been  gnawing  at  my  heart.  I 
then  for  the  first  time  heard  of  that  event  which  sounded 
like  my  own  knell,  without  its  natural  hope  or  sense  of 
rest.     Such  shall  I  be  (is  the  thought  that  haunts  me),  but 

0  !  not  such  ;  O  !  with  what  a  different  retrospect !     But 

1  owe  it  to  justice  to  say.  Such  good  I  truly  can  do  myself, 
etc.,  etc."  The  rest  of  this  painfully  inarticulate  letter  is 
filled  with  further  complaints  of  ill  health,  with  further 
protestations  of  irresponsibility  for  the  neglect  of  duties, 
and  with  promises,  never  to  be  fulfilled,  of  composing  or 
assisting  others  to  compose  a  memoir  of  Thomas  Wedg- 
wood, who,  in  addition  to  his  general  repute  as  a  man  of 
culture,  had  made  a  special  mark  by  his  speculations  in 
psychology. 

The  singular  expression,  "  worse  than  homeless,"  and  the 
reference  to  domestic  distractions,  appear  to  indicate  that 
some  estrangement  had  already  set  in  between  Coleridge 
and  his  wife.  Do  Quincey's  testimony  to  its  existence  at 
the  time  (a  month  or  so  later)  when  he  made  Coleridge's 
acquaintance  may,  subject  to  the  usual  deductions,  be  ac- 
cepted as  trustworthy ;  and,  of  course,  for  aught  we  know, 
it  may  then  have  been  already  of  some  years'  standing. 


Ti.]  MRS.  COLERIDGE.  109 

That  the  provocation  to  it  on  the  husband's  part  may  be 
so  far  antedated  is  at  least  a  reasonable  conjecture.  There 
may  be  nothino- — in  all  likelihood  there  is  nothing — worth 
attention  in  De  Quincey's  gossip  about  the  young  lady, 
"  intellectually  very  much  superior  to  Mrs.  Coleridge,  who 
became  a  neighbour  and  daily  companion  of  Coleridge's 
walks"  at  Keswick.  But  if  there  be  no  foundation  for 
his  remarks  on  "  the  mischiefs  of  a  situation  which  exposed 
Mrs.  Coleridge  to  an  invidious  comparison  with  a  more 
intellectual  person,"  there  is  undoubtedly  plenty  of  point 
in  the  immediately  following  observation  that  "  it  was 
most  unfortunate  for  Coleridge  himself  to  be  continually 
compared  with  one  so  ideally  correct  and  regular  in  his 
habits  as  Mr.  Southey."  The  passion  of  female  jealousy 
assuredly  did  not  need  to  be  called  into  play  to  account  for 
the  alienation  of  Mrs.  Coleridge  from  her  husband.  Mrs. 
Carlyle  has  left  on  record  her  pathetic  lament  over  the  fate 
of  a  woman  who  marries  a  man  of  genius ;  but  a  man  of 
genius  of  the  coldly  selfish  and  exacting  type  of  the  Chel- 
sea philosopher  would  probably  be  a  less  severe  burden  to 
a  woman  of  housewifely  instincts  than  the  weak,  unmethod- 
ical, irresolute,  shiftless  being  that  Coleridge  had  by  this 
time  become.  After  the  arrival  of  the  Southeys,  Mrs. 
Coleridge  would  indeed  have  been  more  than  human  if  she 
had  not  looked  with  an  envious  eye  upon  the  contrast  be- 
tween her  sister  Edith's  lot  and  her  own.  For  this  would 
give  her  the  added  pang  of  perceiving  that  she  was  spe- 
cially unlucky  in  the  matter,  and  that  men  of  genius  could 
("  if  they  chose,""  as  she  would  probably,  though  not  per- 
haps quite  justly  have  put  it)  make  very  good  husbands 
indeed.  If  one  poet  could  finish  bis  poems,  and  pay  his 
tradesmen's  bills,  and  work  steadily  for  the  publishers  in 
his  own  house  without  the  necessity  of  periodical  flittings 


110  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

to  various  parts  of  the  United  Kingdom  or  the  Continent, 
why,  so  could  another.  Witli  such  reflections  as  these 
Mrs.  Coleridge's  mind  was  no  doubt  sadly  busy  during  the 
early  years  of  her  residence  at  the  Lakes,  and,  since  their 
causes  did  not  diminish  but  rather  increased  in  intensity 
as  time  went  on,  the  estrangement  between  them — or  rath- 
er, to  do  Coleridge  justice,  her  estrangement  from  her  hus- 
band—  had,  by  1806,  no  doubt  become  complete.  The 
fatal  habit  which  even  up  to  this  time  seems  to  have  been 
unknown  to  most  of  his  friends  could  hardly  have  been  a 
secret  to  his  wife,  and  his  four  or  five  years  of  slavery  to 
it  may  well  have  worn  out  her  patience. 

This  single  cause  indeed,  namely,  Coleridge's  addiction 
to  opium,  is  quite  sufficient,  through  the  humiliations,  dis- 
comfort, and  privations,  pecuniary  and  otherwise,  for  which 
the  vice  was  no  doubt  mediately  or  immediately  responsi- 
ble, to  account  for  the  unhappy  issue  of  a  union  which 
undoubtedly  was  one  of  love  to  begin  with,  and  which 
seems  to  have  retained  that  character  for  at  least  six  years 
of  its  course.  We  have  noted  the  language  of  warm  affec- 
tion in  which  the  "  beloved  Sara"  is  spoken  of  in  the  early 
poems,  and  up  to  the  time  of  Coleridge's  stay  in  Germany 
his  feelings  towards  his  wife  remained  evidently  unchanged. 
To  his  children,  of  whom  three  out  of  the  four  born  to 
him  had  survived,  he  was  deeply  attached ;  and  the  re- 
markable promise  displayed  by  the  eldest  son,  Hartley,  and 
his  youngest  child  and  only  daughter,  Sara,  made  them 
objects  of  no  less  interest  to  his  intellect  than  to  his  heart. 
"  Hartley,"  he  writes  to  Mr.  Poole  in  1803,  "is  a  strange, 
strange  boy,  exquisitely  wild,  an  utter  visionary ;  like  the 
moon  among  thin  clouds,  he  moves  in  a  circle  of  light  of 
his  own  making.  He  alone  is  a  light  of  his  own."  And 
of  his  daughter  in  the  same  poetic  strain :  "  My  meek  lit- 


VI.]  HIS  FAMILY.  Ill 

tie  Sara  is  a  remarkably  interesting-  baby,  with  the  finest 
possible  skin,  and  large  bine  eyes,  and  she  smiles  as  if  she 
were  basking  in  a  sunshine  as  mild  as  moonlight  of  her 
own  quiet  happiness."  Derwent,  a  less  remarkable  but  no 
less  attractive  child  than  his  brother  and  sister  (whom  he 
was  destined  long  to  survive),  held  an  equal  place  in  his 
father's  affections.  Yet  all  these  interwoven  influences — a 
deep  love  of  his  children  and  a  sincere  attachment  to  his 
wife,  of  whom,  indeed,  he  never  ceased  to  speak  with  re- 
spect and  regard — were  as  powerless  as  in  so  many  thou- 
sands of  other  cases  they  have  been,  to  brace  an  enfeebled 
will  to  the  task  of  self -reform.  In  1807  ''respect  and  re- 
gard" had  manifestly  taken  the  place  of  any  warmer  feel- 
ing in  his  mind.  Later  on  in  the  letter  above  quoted  he 
says,  "  In  less  than  a  week  I  go  down  to  Ottery,  with  my 
children  and  their  mother,  from  a  sense  of  duty  "  {i.e.  to 
his  brother,  the  Rev.  George  Coleridge,  who  had  succeeded 
his  father  as  head-master  of  the  Ottery  St.  Mary  Grammar 
School)  "  as  far  as  it  affects  myself,  and  from  a  promise 
made  to  Mrs.  Coleridge,  as  far  as  it  affects  lier,  and  indeed 
of  a  debt  of  respect  to  her  for  her  many  praiseworthy  qual- 
ities." When  husbands  and  wives  take  to  liquidating 
debts  of  this  kind,  and  in  this  spirit,  it  is  pretty  con- 
clusive evidence  that  all  other  accounts  between  them  are 
closed. 

The  letter  from  which  these  extracts  have  been  taken 
was  written  from  Aisholt,  near  Bridgewater,  where  Cole- 
ridge was  then  staying,  with  his  wife  and  children,  as  the 
guest  of  a  Mr.  Price ;  and  his  friend  Poole's  description 
to  Josiah  Wedgwood  of  his  state  at  that  time  is  signifi- 
cant as  showing  that  some  at  least  of  his  intimate  ac- 
quaintances had  no  suspicion  of  the  real  cause  of  his  bod- 
ily and  mental  disorders.  "  I  admire  him,"  Poole  writes, 
6 


112  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

"and  pity  him  more  than  ever.  His  information  is  much 
extended,  the  great  qualities  of  his  mind  heightened  and 
better  disciplined,  but  alas !  his  health  is  much  weaker, 
and  his  great  failing,  procrastination,  or  the  incapabil- 
ity of  acting  agreeably  to  his  wish  and  will,  much  in- 
creased." 

Whether  the  promised  visit  to  Ottery  St.  Mary  was  ever 
paid  there  is  no  record  to  show,  but  at  the  end  of  July, 
1807,  we  again  hear  of  the  Coleridges  at  the  house  of  a 
Mr.  Chubb,  a  descendant  of  the  Deist,  at  Bridgewater; 
and  here  it  was  that  De  Quincey,  after  having  endeav- 
oured in  vain  to  run  the  poet  to  earth  at  Stowey,  where 
he  had  been  staying  with  Mr.  Poole,  and  whence  he  had 
gone  to  pay  a  short  visit  to  Lord  Egmont,  succeeded  in 
obtaining  an  introduction  to  him.  The  characteristic  pas- 
sage in  which  the  younger  man  describes  their  first  meet- 
ing is  too  long  for  quotation,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  too 
well  known  to  need  it;  his  vivid  and  acute  criticism  of 
Coleridge's  conversation  may  be  more  appropriately  cited 
hereafter.  His  evidence  as  to  the  conjugal  relations  of 
Coleridge  and  his  wife  has  been  already  discussed;  and 
the  last  remaining  point  of  interest  about  this  memorable 
introduction  is  the  testimony  which  it  incidentally  affords 
to  De  Quincey's  genuine  and  generous  instinct  of  hero- 
worship,  and  to  the  deptli  of  Coleridge's  pecuniary  em- 
barrassments. The  loan  of  £300,  which  the  poet's  en- 
thusiastic admirer  insisted  on  Cottle's  conveying  to  him 
as  from  an  unknown  "  young  man  of  fortune  who  admired 
his  talents,"  should  cover  a  multitude  of  De  Quincey's 
subsequent  sins.  It  was  indeed  only  upon  Cottle's  urgent 
representation  that  he  had  consented  to  reduce  the  sum 
from  £500  to  £300.  Nor  does  there  seem  any  doubt  of 
his  having  honestly  attempted  to  conceal  his  own  identity 


VI.]  MEETING  WITU  DE  QULVCEY.  113 

witli  the   nameless  benefactor,  though,  according  to   his 
own  later  account,  he  failed.' 

This  occurred  in  November,  1807,  and  in  the  previous 
month  De  Quincey  had  been  able  to  render  Coleridge  a 
minor  service,  while  at  the  same  moment  gratifying  a  long 
cherished  wish  of  his  own.  Mrs.  Coleridge  was  about  to 
return  with  her  children  to  Keswick,  but  her  husband,  not 
yet  master  of  this  £300  windfall,  and  undoubtedly  at  his 
wits'  end  for  money,  was  arranging  for  a  course  of  lectures 
to  be  delivered  at  the  Royal  Institution  early  in  the  ensu- 
ing year,  and  could  not  accompany  them.  De  Quincey 
offered  accordingly  to  be  their  escort,  and  duly  conducted 
them  to  Wordsworth's  house,  thus  making  the  acquaint- 
ance of  the  second  of  his  two  great  poetical  idols  within 
a  few  months  of  paying  his  first  homage  to  the  other.  In 
February,  1808,  Coleridge  again  took  up  his  abode  in  Lon- 
don at  his  old  free  quarters  in  the  Courier  office,  and  be- 
gan the  delivery  of  a  promised  series  of  sixteen  lectures 
on  Poetry  and  the  Fine  Arts.  "  I  wish  you  could  see  him," 
again  writes  Poole  to  Wedgwood,  "you  would  pity  and 
admire.  He  is  much  improved,  but  has  still  less  volun- 
tary power  than  ever.  Yet  he  is  so  committed  that  I 
think  he  must  deliver  these  lectures."  Considering  that 
the  authorities  of  the  Royal  Institution  had  agreed  to  pay 
him  one  hundred  guineas  for  delivering  the  lectures,  he 
undoubtedly  was  more  or  less  "  committed  ;"  and  his  vol- 
untary power,  however  small,  might  be  safely  supposed  to 

'  "  In  a  letter  written  by  him  (Coleridge)  about  fifteen  years  after 
that  time,  I  found  that  he  had  become  aware  of  all  the  circumstances, 
perhaps  through  some  indiscretion  of  Mr.  Cottle's."  Perhaps,  how- 
ever, no  very  great  indiscretion  on  Mr.  Cottle's  part  was  needed  to 
enable  Coleridge  to  trace  the  loan  to  so  ardent  a  young  admirer  and 
disciple. 


114  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

be  equal  to  the  task  of  fulfilling  a  contract.  But  to  get 
the  lecturer  into  the  lecture  -  room  does  not  amount  to 
much  more  than  bringing  the  horse  to  the  water.  You 
can  no  more  make  the  one  drink  than  you  can  prevent 
the  other  from  sending  his  audience  away  thirsty.  Cole- 
ridge's lectures  on  Poetr}''  and  the  Fine  Arts  were  con- 
fused, ill  arranged,  and  generally  disappointing  to  the  last 
degree.  Sometimes  it  was  not  even  possible  to  bring  the 
horse  to  the  water.  Charles  Lamb  writes  to  Manning  on 
the  20th  of  February,  1808  (early  days  indeed),  that  Cole- 
ridge had  only  delivered  two  lectures,  and  that  though 
"  two  more  were  intended,  he  did  not  come."  De  Quin- 
cey  writes  of  "  dismissals  of  audience  after  audience,  with 
pleas  of  illness;  and  on  many  of  his  lecture-days  I  have 
seen  all  Albermarle  Street  closed  by  a  lock  of  carriages 
filled  with  women  of  distinction,  until  the  servants  of  the 
Institution  or  their  own  footmen  advanced  to  the  carriage- 
doors  with  the  intelligence  that  Mr.  Coleridge  had  been 
suddenly  taken  ill."  Naturally  there  came  a  time  when 
the  "  women  of  distinction  "  began  to  tire  of  this  treat- 
ment. "  The  plea,  which  at  first  had  been  received  with 
expressions  of  concern,  repeated  too  often  began  to  rouse 
disgust.  Many  in  anger,  and  some  in  real  uncertainty 
whether  it  would  not  be  trouble  thrown  away,  ceased  to 
attend."  And  what  De  Quincey  has  to  say  of  the  lectures 
themselves,  when  they  did  by  chance  get  delivered,  is  no 
less  melancholy.  "  The  lecturer's  appearance,"  he  says, 
"  was  generally  that  of  a  man  struggling  with  pain  and 
overmastering  illness." 

"His  lips  were  baked  with  feverish  heat,  and  often  blaclt  in  col- 
our ;  and  in  spite  of  the  water  which  he  continued  drinking  through 
the  whole  course  of  the  lecture,  he  often  seemed  to  labour  under  an 
almost  paralytic  inability  to  raise  the  upper  jaw  from  the  lower  " 


VI.]  HIS  LECTURES.  115 

[i.e.,  I  suppose  to  move  the  lower  jaw].  "  la  such  a  state  it  is  clear 
that  nothing  could  save  the  lecture  itself  from  reflecting  his  own 
feebleness  and  exhaustion  except  the  advantage  of  having  been  pre- 
eomposed  in  some  happier  mood.  But  that  never  happened :  most 
unfortunately,  he  relied  on  his  extempore  ability  to  carry  him  through. 
Xow,  had  he  been  in  spirits,  or  had  he  gathered  animation  and  kin- 
dled by  his  own  emotion,  no  written  lecture  could  have  been  more 
effectual  than  one  of  his  unpremeditated  colloquial  harangues.  But 
either  he  was  depressed  originally  below  the  point  from  which  re- 
ascent  was  possible,  or  else  this  reaction  was  intercepted  by  continual 
disgust  from  looking  back  upon  his  own  ill  success ;  for  assuredly 
he  never  once  recovered  that  free  and  eloquent  movement  of  thought 
which  he  could  command  at  any  time  in  a  private  company.  The 
passages  he  read,  moreover,  in  illustrating  his  doctrines,  were  gener- 
ally unhappily  chosen,  because  chosen  at  haphazard,  from  the  diffi- 
culty of  finding  at  a  moment's  summons  these  passages  which  his 
purpose  required.  Nor  do  I  remember  any  that  produced  much  ef- 
fect except  two  or  three  which  I  myself  put  ready  marked  into  his 
hands  among  the  Metrical  Romances,  edited  by  Ritson.  Generally 
speaking,  the  selections  were  as  injudicious  and  as  inappropriate  as 
they  were  ill  delivered,  for  among  Coleridge's  accomplishments  good 
reading  was  not  one.  He  had  neither  voice  (so  at  least  /  thought) 
nor  management  of  voice.  This  defect  is  unfortunate  in  a  public 
lecturer,  for  it  is  inconceivable  how  much  weight  and  effectual  pathos 
can  be  communicated  by  sonorous  depth  and  melodious  cadence  of 
the  human  voice  to  sentiments  the  most  trivial ; '  nor,  on  the  other 
hand,  how  the  grandest  are  emasculated  by  a  style  of  reading  which 
fails  in  distributing  the  lights  and  shadows  of  a  musical  intonation. 
However,  this  defect  chiefly  concerned  the  immediate  impression ;  the 
most  afflicting  to  a  friend  of  Coleridge's  was  the  entire  absence  of  his 
own  peculiar  and  majestic  intellect;  no  heart,  no  soul,  was  in  any- 
tiimg  he  said ;  no  strength  of  feeling  in  recaUiug  universal  truths , 


'  The  justice  of  this  criticism  will  be  acknowledged  by  those  many 
persons  whom  Mr.  Blight's  great  elocutionary  skill  has  occasionally 
deluded  into  imagining  that  the  very  commonplace  verse  which  the 
famous  orator  has  been  often  known  to  quote  with  admiration  is 
poetry  of  a  high  order. 


116  COLERIDGE.  [chap.  vi. 

no  power  of  originality  or  compass  of  moral  relations  in  his  novel- 
ties ;  all  was  a  poor,  faint  reflection  from  pearls  once  scattered  on 
the  highway  by  himself  in  the  prodigality  of  his  early  opulence — a 
mendicant  dependence  on  the  alms  dropped  from  his  own  overflow- 
ing treasury  of  happier  times." 

Severe  as  is  this  censure  of  the  lectures,  there  is  unhap- 
pily no  good  ground  for  disputing  its  substantial  justice, 
and  the  inferences  which  it  suggests  are  only  too  pain- 
fully plain.  One  can  well  understand  Coleridge's  being 
an  ineffective  lecturer,  and  no  failure  in  this  respect,  how- 
ever conspicuous,  would  necessarily  force  us  to  the  hy- 
pothesis of  physical  disability.  But  a  Coleridge  who  could 
no  more  compose  a  lecture  than  he  could  deliver  one — a 
Coleridge  who  could  neither  write  nor  extemporise  any- 
thing specially  remarkable  on  a  subject  so  congenial  to 
him  as  that  of  English  poetry — must  assuredly  have  spent 
most  of  his  time,  whether  in  the  lecture-room  or  out  of 
it,  in  a  state  of  incapacity  for  sustained  intellectual  effort. 
De  Quincey's  humorous  account  of  the  lecturer's  shiftless, 
untidy  life  at  the  Courier  office,  and  even  the  Rabelaisian 
quip  which  Charles  Lamb  throws  at  it  in  the  above-quoted 
letter  to  Manning,  are  sufficient  indications  of  his  state  at 
this  time.  "Oh,  Charles,"  he  wrote  to  Lamb,  early  in 
February,  just  before  the  course  of  lectures  Avas  to  begin, 
"I  am  very,  very  ill.  Vixiy  The  sad  truth  is  that,  as 
seems  to  have  been  always  the  case  with  him  when  living 
alone,  he  was  during  these  months  of  his  residence  in 
London  more  constantly  and  hopelessly  under  the  do- 
minion of  opium  than  ever. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

RETUEN  TO  THE  LAKES. — FROM!  KESWICK  TO  GRASMERE.  — WITH 
AVORDSWORTH  AT  ALLAN  BANK. — THE  "FRIEND." — QITITS 
THE  LAKE  COUNTRY  FOREVER. 

[1809-1810.] 

From  the  close  of  this  series  of  lectures  in  the  month 
of  May,  1808,  until  the  end  of  the  year  it  is  impossible 
to  trace  Coleridge's  movements  or  even  to  determine  the 
nature  of  his  occupation  with  any  approach  to  exactitude. 
The  probability  is,  however,  that  he  remained  in  London 
at  his  lodgings  in  the  Courier  office,  and  that  he  sup- 
ported himself  by  rendering  assistance  in  various  ways  to 
Mr.  Daniel  Stuart.  "VVe  know  nothing  of  him,  however, 
with  certainty  until  we  fiud  him  once  more  at  the  Lakes 
in  the  early  part  of  the  year  1809,  but  not  in  his  own 
home.  Wordsworth  had  removed  from  his  former  abode 
at  Grasmere  to  Allan  Bank,  a  larger  house  some  three- 
quarters  of  a  mile  distant,  and  there  Coleridge  took  up  his 
residence,  more,  it  would  seem,  as  a  permanent  inmate  of 
his  friend's  house  than  as  a  guest.  The  specific  cause  of 
this  migration  from  Greta  Hall  to  Allan  Bank  does  not 
appear,  but  all  the  accessible  evidence,  contemporary  and 
subsequent,  seems  to  point  to  the  probability  that  it  was 
the  result  of  a  definite  break-up  of  Coleridge's  own  home. 
Ee  continued,  at  any  rate,  to  reside  in  Wordsworth's  house 


118  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

during  the  whole  seven  months  of  his  editorship  of  the 
Friend^  a  new  venture  in  periodical  literature  which  he 
undertook  at  this  period ;  and  we  shall  see  that  upon  its 
failure  he  did  not  resume  his  residence  at  Greta  Hall,  but 
quitted  the  Lake  country  at  once  and  forever. 

We  need  not  take  too  literally  Coleridge's  declaration 
in  the  Biographia  Literaria  that  one  "main  object  of  his 
in  starting  the  Friend  was  to  establish  the  philosophical 
distinction  between  the  Reason  and  the  Understanding." 
Had  this  been  so,  or  at  least  had  the  periodical  been  act- 
ually conducted  in  conformity  with  any  such  purpose, 
even  the  chagrined  projector  himself  could  scarcely  have 
had  the  face  to  complain,  as  Coleridge  did  very  bitterly, 
of  the  reception  accorded  to  it  by  the  public.  The  most 
unpractical  of  thinkers  can  hardly  have  imagined  that  the 
"general  reader"  would  "take  in"  a  weekly  metaphys- 
ical journal  published  at  a  town  in  Cumberland.  The 
Friend  was  not  quite  so  essentially  hopeless  an  enter- 
prise as  that  would  have  been ;  but  the  accidents  of 
mismanagement  and  imprudence  soon  made  it,  for  all 
practical  purposes,  sufficiently  desperate.  Even  the  for- 
lorn Watchman,  which  had  been  set  on  foot  when  Cole- 
ridge had  fourteen  years'  less  experience  of  the  world, 
was  hardly  more  certainly  foredoomed.  The  first  care  of 
the  founder  of  the  Friend  was  to  select,  as  the  place  of 
publication,  a  town  exactly  twenty -eight  miles  from  his 
own  abode — a  distance  virtually  trebled,  as  De  Quincey 
observes,  "  by  the  interposition  of  Kirkstone,  a  mountain 
only  to  be  scaled  by  a  carriage  ascent  of  three  miles, 
and  so  steep  in  parts  that  witliout  four  horses  no  solitary 
traveller  can  persuade  the  neighbouring  innkeepers  to  con- 
vey him."  Here,  however,  at  Penrith,  "by  way  of  pur- 
chasing intolerable  difficulties  at  the  highest  price,"  Coie- 


VII.]  RETURN  TO  THE  LAKES.  119 

ridge  was  advised  and  actually  persuaded  to  set  up  a  printer, 
to  buy  and  lay  in  a  stock  of  paper,  types,  etc.,  instead  of 
resorting  to  some  printer  already  established  at  a  nearer 
place — as,  for  instance,  Kendal,  which  was  ten  miles  nearer, 
and  connected  with  Coleridge's  then  place  of  residence  by 
a  daily  post,  whereas  at  Penrith  there  was  no  post  at  all. 
Having  thus  studiously  and  severely  handicapped  himself, 
the  projector  of  the  new  periodical  set  to  work,  upon  the 
strength  of  what  seems  to  have  been  in  great  measure  a 
fancy  list  of  subscribers,  to  print  and,  so  far  as  his  extraor- 
dinary arrangements  permitted,  to  circulate  his  journal. 
With  naive  sententiousness  he  warns  the  readers  of  the  Bio- 
graphia  Literaria  against  trusting,  in  their  own  case,  to  such 
a  guarantee  as  he  supposed  himself  to  possess.  "You  can- 
not," he  observes,  "  be  certain  that  the  names  of  a  subscrip- 
tion list  liave  been  put  down  by  sufficient  authority ;  or, 
should  that  be  ascertained,  it  still  remains  to  be  known 
whether  they  were  not  extorted  by  some  over -zealous 
friend's  importunity ;  whether  the  subscriber  had  not  yield- 
ed his  name  merely  from  want  of  courage  to  say  no !  and 
with  the  intention  of  dropping  the  work  as  soon  as  possi- 
ble." Thus,  out  of  a  hundred  patrons  who  had  been  ob- 
tained for  the  Friend  by  an  energetic  canvasser,  "  ninety 
threw  up  the  publication  before  the  fourth  number  with- 
out any  notice,  though  it  was  well  known  to  them  that  in 
consequence  of  the  distance  and  the  slowness  and  irregu- 
larity of  the  conveyance  "  [it  is  amusing  to  observe  the  way 
in  which  Coleridge  notes  these  drawbacks  of  his  own  crea- 
tion as  though  they  were  "  the  act  of  God  "]  "  I  was  com- 
pelled to  lay  in  a  stock  of  stamped  paper  for  at  least  eight 
wrecks  beforehand,  each  sheet  of  which  stood  me  in  five- 
pence  previous  to  its  arrival  at  my  printer's;  though  the 
subscription  money  was  not  to  be  received  till  the  twenty 
T      G* 


120  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

first  week  after  the  commencement  of  the  work ;  and,  last- 
ly, though  it  was  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  impracticable  for 
me  to  receive  the  money  for  two  or  three  numbers  without 
paying  an  equal  sum  for  the  postage." 

Enough  appears  in  this  undesignedly  droll  account  of 
the  venture  to  show  pretty  clearly  that,  even  had  the  Friend 
obtained  a  reasonable  measure  of  popularity  at  starting, 
the  flagrant  defects  in  the  methods  of  distributing  and 
financing  it  must  have  insured  its  early  decease.  But,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  it  had  no  chance  of  popularity  from  the 
outset.  Its  first  number  appeared  on  1st  August,  1809,  and 
Coleridge,  writing  to  Southey  on  20th  October  of  the  same 
year,  speaks  of  his  "  original  apprehension  "  that  the  plan 
and  execution  of  the  Friend  is  so  utterly  unsuitable  to  the 
public  taste  as  to  preclude  all  rational  hopes  of  its  success. 
"  Much,"  he  continues,  "  might  have  been  done  to  have 
made  the  former  numbers  less  so,  by  the  interposition  of 
others  written  more  expressly  for  general  interest ;"  and  he 
promises  to  do  his  best  in  future  to  "  interpose  tales  and 
whole  numbers  of  amusement,  which  will  make  the  periods 
lighter  and  shorter."  Meanwhile  he  begs  Southey  to  write 
a  letter  to  the  Friend  in  a  lively  style,  rallying  its  editor 
on  "bis  Quixotism  in  expecting  that  the  public  will  ever 
pretend  to  understand  his  lucubrations  or  feel  any  interest 
in  subjects  of  such  sad  and  unkempt  antiquity."  Southey, 
ever  good-natured,  complied,  even  amid  the  unceasing  press 
of  his  work,  with  the  request;  and  to  the  letter  of  lightly- 
touched  satire  which  he  contributed  to  the  journal  he  added 
a  few  private  lines  of  friendly  counsel,  strongly  urging  Cole- 
ridge to  give  two  or  three  amusing  numbers,  and  he  would 
hear  of  admiration  on  every  side.  "Insert  too,"  he  sug- 
gested, "a  few  more  poems  —  any  that  you  have,  except 
Christabel,  for  that  is  of  too  much  value.     And  write  now 


vii.]  THE  «' FRIEND."  121 

that  character  of  Bonaparte,  announced  in  former  times  for 
'  to-morrow,  and  to-morrow,  and  to-morrow.'  "  It  was  too 
late,  however,  for  good  advice  to  be  of  any  avail :  the  Friend 
was  past  praying  for.  It  lingered  on  till  its  twenty-eighth 
number,  and  expired,  unlike  the  Watchman,  without  any 
farewell  to  its  friends,  in  the  third  week  of  March,  1810. 

The  republication  of  this  periodical,  or  rather  selections 
from  it,  which  appeared  in  1818,  is  hardly  perhaps  described 
with  justice  in  De  Quincey's  words  as  "  altogether  and  ab- 
solutely a  new  work."  A  reader  can,  at  any  rate,  form  a 
pretty  fair  estimate  from  it  of  the  style  and  probable  pub- 
lic attractions  of  the  original  issue ;  and  a  perusal  of  it, 
considered  in  its  character  as  a  bid  for  the  patronage  of  the 
general  reader,  is  certainly  calculated  to  excite  an  astonish- 
ment too  deep  for  words.  We  have,  of  course,  to  bear  in 
mind  that  the  standard  of  the  readable  in  our  grandfathers' 
days  was  a  more  liberal  and  tolerant  one  than  it  is  in  our 
own.  In  those  days  of  leisurely  communications  and  slow- 
ly moving  events  there  was  relatively  at  least  a  far  larger 
public  for  a  weekly  issue  of  moral  and  philosophical  essays, 
under  the  name  of  a  periodical,  than  it  would  be  found  easy 
to  secure  at  present,  when  even  a  monthly  discourse  upon 
things  in  general  requires  Mr.  Ruskin's  brilliancy  of  elo- 
quence, vivacity  of  humour,  and  perpetual  charm  of  unex- 
pectedness to  carry  it  off.  Still  the  Spectator  continued  to 
be  read  in  Coleridge's  day,  and  people  therefore  must  have 
had  before  them  a  perpetual  example  of  what  it  was  possi- 
ble to  do  in  the  way  of  combining  entertainment  with  in- 
struction. How,  then,  it  could  have  entered  into  the  mind 
of  the  most  sanguine  projector  to  suppose  that  the  lon- 
gueurs and  the  difficulty  of  the  Friend  would  be  patiently 
borne  with  for  the  sake  of  the  solid  nutriment  which  it 
contained  it  is  quite  impossible  to  understand.     Even  sup- 


122  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

posing  that  a  weekly,  -whose  avowed  object  was  "  to  aid  in 
the  formation  of  fixed  principles  in  politics,  morals,  and 
religion,"  could  possibly  be  floated,  even  "  with  literary 
amusements  interspersed,"  it  is  evident  that  very  much 
would  depend  upon  the  character  of  these  "amusements" 
themselves.  In  the  republication  of  1817  they  appear  un- 
der the  heading  of  "  landing-places."  One  of  them  con- 
sists of  a  parallel  between  Voltaire  and  Erasmus,  and  be- 
tween Rousseau  and  Luther,  founded,  of  course,  on  the  re- 
spective attitudes  of  the  two  pairs  of  personages  to  the 
Revolution  and  the  Reformation.  Another  at  the  end 
of  the  scries  consists  of  a  criticism  of,  and  panegyric  on. 
Sir  Alexander  Ball,  the  governor  of  Malta.  Such  are  the 
landing  -  places.  But  how  should  any  reader,  wearied 
with  "forever  climbing  up  the  climbing  wave"  of  Cole- 
ridge's eloquence,  have  found  rest  or  refreshment  on 
one  of  these  uncomfortable  little  sandbanks?  It  was 
true  that  the  original  issue  of  the  Friend  contained  po- 
etical contributions  which  do  not  appear  in  the  repub- 
lication ;  but  poetry  in  itself,  or,  at  any  rate,  good  po- 
etry, is  not  a  relief  to  the  overstrained  faculties,  and, 
even  if  it  were,  the  relief  would  have  been  provided  at 
too  infrequent  intervals  to  affect  the  general  result.  The 
fact  is,  however,  that  Coleridge's  own  theory  of  his  duty 
as  a  public  instructor  was  in  itself  fatal  to  any  hope  of 
his  venture  proving  a  commercial  success.  Even  when 
entreated  by  Southey  to  lighten  the  character  of  the  peri- 
odical, he  accompanies  his  admission  of  the  worldly  wis- 
dom of  the  advice  with  something  like  a  protest  against 
such  a  departure  from  the  severity  of  his  original  plan. 
His  object,  as  he  puts  it  with  much  cogency  from  liis 
own  unpractical  point  of  view — his  object  being  to  teach 
men  how  to  think  on  politics,  religion,  and  morals,  and 


vii]  THE  "FRIEND."  123 

thinking  being*  a  very  arduous  and  distasteful  business  to 
the  mass  of  mankind,  it  followed  that  the  essays  of  the 
Friend  (and  particularly  the  earlier  essays,  in  which  the 
reader  required  to  be  "grounded"  in  his  subject)  could 
hardly  be  agreeable  reading.  With  perfect  frankness  in- 
deed does  he  admit  in  his  prospectus  that  he  must  "sub- 
mit to  be  thought  dull  by  those  who  seek  amusement 
only."  He  hoped,  however,  as  he  says  in  one  of  his  ear- 
lier essays,  to  become  livelier  as  he  went  on.  "The  prop- 
er merit  of  a  foundation  is  its  massiveness  and  solidity. 
The  conveniences  and  ornaments,  the  gilding  and  stucco- 
work,  the  sunshine  and  sunny  prospects,  will  come  with 
the  superstructure."  But  the  building,  alas!  was  never 
destined  to  be  completed,  and  the  architect  had  his  own 
misgivings  about  the  attractions  even  of  the  completed 
edifice.  "I  dare  not  flatter  myself  that  any  endeavours 
of  mine,  compatible  with  the  duty  I  owe  to  the  truth  and 
the  hope  of  permanent  utility,  will  render  the  Friend 
agreeable  to  the  majority  of  what  is  called  the  reading 
public.  I  never  expected  it.  How  indeed  could  I  when, 
etc."  Yet,  in  spite  of  these  professions,  it  is  clear  from 
the  prospectus  that  Coleridge  believed  in  the  possibility 
of  obtaining  a  public  for  the  Friend.  He  says  that  "  a 
motive  for  honourable  ambition  was  supplied  by  the  fact 
that  every  periodical  paper  of  the  kind  now  attempted, 
which  had  been  conducted  with  zeal  and  ability,  was  not 
only  well  received  at  the  time,  but  has  become  popular ;" 
and  he  seems  to  regard  it  as  a  comparatively  unimportant 
circumstance  that  the  Friend  would  be  distinguished  from 
"  its  celebrated  predecessors,  the  Spectator  and  the  like," 
by  the  "greater  length  of  the  separate  essays,  by  their 
closer  connection  with  each  othei",  and  by  the  predomi- 
nance of  one  object,  and   the  common  bearing  of  all  to 


124  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

one  end."  It  was,  of  course,  exactly  this  plus  of  prolix- 
ity and  minus  of  variety  which  lowered  the  sum  of  the 
Friend's  attractions  so  far  below  that  of  the  Spectator  as 
to  deprive  the  success  of  Addison  of  all  its  value  as  a 
precedent. 

Nor  is  it  easy  to  agree  with  the  editor  of  the  reprint 
of  1837  that  the  work,  "  with  all  its  imperfections,  is  per- 
haps the  most  vigorous"  of  its  author's  compositions. 
That  there  are  passages  in  it  which  impress  us  by  their 
force  of  expression,  as  well  as  by  subtlety  or  beauty  of 
thought,  must  of  course  be  admitted.  It  was  impossible 
to  a  man  of  Coleridge's  literary  power  that  it  should  be 
otherwise.  But  "  vigorous  "  is  certainly  not  the  adjective 
which  seems  to  me  to  suggest  itself  to  an  impartial  critic 
of  these  too  copious  disquisitions.  Making  every  allow- 
ance for  their  necessary  elasticity  of  scope  as  being  de- 
signed to  "  prepare  and  discipline  the  student's  moral  and 
intellectual  being,  not  to  propound  dogmas  and  theories 
for  his  adoption,"  it  must,  I  think,  be  allowed  that  they 
are  wanting  in  that  continuity  of  movement  and  co-ordi- 
nation of  parts  which,  as  it  seems  to  me,  enters  into  any 
intelligible  definition  of  "  vigour,"  as  attributed  to  a  work 
of  moral  and  political  exposition  considered  as  a  whole. 
The  writer's  discursiveness  is  too  often  and  too  vexatious- 
ly  felt  by  the  reader  to  permit  of  the  survival  of  any  sense 
of  theorematic  unity  in  his  mind ;  he  soon  gives  up 
all  attempts  at  periodical  measurement  of  his  own  and 
his  author's  progress  towards  the  prescribed  goal  of  their 
journey ;  and  he  resigns  himself  in  this,  as  in  so  many 
other  of  Coleridge's  prose  works,  to  a  study  of  isolated 
and  detached  passages.  So  treated,  however,  one  may 
freely  admit  that  the  Friend  is  fully  worthy  of  the  ad- 
miration with  which  Mr.  H.  N.  Colcridcfc  regarded  it.     If 


Til.]  THE  "FRIEND."  125 

not  the  most  vigorous,  it  is  beyond  all  comparison  the 
most  characteristic  of  all  his  uncle's  performances  in  this 
field  of  his  multiform  activity.  In  no  way  could  the  pe- 
culiar pregnancy  of  Coleridge's  thoughts,  the  more  than 
scholastic  subtlety  of  his  dialectic,  and  the  passionate 
fervour  of  his  spirituality  be  more  impressively  exhibited 
than  by  a  well-made  selection  of  loci  from  the  pages  of 
the  Friend. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

LONDON  AGAIN. —  SECOND  RECOUESE  TO  JOURNALISM. —  THE 
"courier"  articles. —  THE  SHAKESPEARE  LECTURES. — 
PRODUCTION  OP  "remorse." — AT  BRISTOL  AGAIN  AS  LECT- 
URER.—  RESIDENCE  AT  CALNE. —  INCREASING  ILL  HEALTH 
AND  EMBARRASSMENTS. — RETIREMENT  TO  MR.  GILLMAN's. 

[1810-1816.] 

The  life  led  by  Coleridge  during  the  six  years  next  en- 
suing is  diflScult  to  trace,  even  in  the  barest  outline ;  to 
give  a  detailed  and  circumstantial  account  of  it  from  any 
ordinarily  accessible  source  of  information  is  impossible. 
Nor  is  it,  I  imagine,  very  probable  that  even  the  most 
exhaustive  search  among  whatever  unprinted  records  may 
exist  in  the  possession  of  his  friends  would  at  all  com- 
pletely supply  the  present  lack  of  biographical  material. 
For  not  only  had  it  become  Coleridge's  habit  to  disappear 
from  the  sight  of  his  kinsmen  and  acquaintances  for  long 
periods  together;  he  had  fallen  almost  wholly  silent  also. 
They  not  only  ceased  to  see  him,  but  they  ceased  to  hear 
of  him.  Letters  addressed  to  him,  even  on  subjects  of 
the  greatest  importance,  would  remain  for  months  unno- 
ticed, and  in  many  instances  would  receive  no  answer  at 
all.  His  correspondence  during  tlic  next  half-dozen  years 
must  have  been  of  the  scantiest  amount  and  the  most  in- 
termittent character,  and  a  biographer  could  hope,  there- 


CHAP.  VIII.]  LONDON  AGAIN.  127 

fore,  for  but  little  aid  in  bridging-  over  the  large  gaps  in 
his  knowledge  of  this  period,  even  if  every  extant  letter 
written  by  Coleridge  during  its  continuance  were  to  be 
given  to  the  world. 

Such  light,  too,  as  is  retrospectively  thrown  upon  it  by 
Coleridge's  correspondence  of  a  later  date  is  of  the  most 
fitful  description  —  scarcely  more  than  serves,  in  fact,  for 
the  rendering  of  darkness  visible.  Even  the  sudden  and 
final  departure  from  the  Lakes  it  leaves  involved  in  as 
much  obscurity  as  ever.  Writing  to  Mr.  Thomas  Allsop* 
from  Ranisgate  twelve  years  afterwards  (8th  October, 
1822)  he  says  that  he  "counts  four  grasping  and  griping 
sorrows  in  his  past  life."  The  first  of  these  "  was  when  " 
[no  date  given]  "  the  vision  of  a  happy  home  sank  for- 
ever, and  it  became  impossible  for  me  longer  even  to 
hope  for  domestic  happiness  under  the  name  of  husband." 
That  is  plain  enough  on  the  whole,  though  it  still  leaves 
us  in  some  uncertainty  as  to  whether  the  "  sinking  of  the 
vision"  was  as  gradual  as  the  estrangement  between  hus- 
band and  wife,  or  whether  he  refers  to  some  violent  rupt- 
ure of  relations  with  Mrs.  Coleridge,  possibly  precipitating 
his  departure  from  the  Lakes.     If  so,  the  second  ''griping 

'  Coleridge  made  the  acquaintance  of  this  gentleman,  who  became 
his  enthusiastic  disciple,  in  1818.  Ilis  chief  interest  for  us  is  the 
fact  that  for  the  next  seven  years  he  was  Coleridge's  correspondent. 
Personally,  he  was  a  man  of  little  judgment  or  critical  discrimination, 
and  his  sense  of  the  ridiculous  may  be  measured  by  the  following 
passage.  Speaking  of  the  sweetness  of  Charles  Lamb's  smile,  he 
says  that  "  there  is  still  one  man  living,  a  stock-broker,  who  has  that 
smile,"  and  adds :  "  To  those  who  wish  to  sec  the  only  thing  left  on 
earth,  if  it  is  stiU  left,  uf  Lamb,  his  best  and  most  beautiful  remain — 

his  smile — I  will  indicate  its  possessor,  Mr. ,  of  Throgmorton 

Street."  How  the  original  "  possessor  "  of  this  apparently  assign- 
able security  would  have  longed  to  "  feel  Mr.  AUsop's  head !" 


128  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

and  grasping  sorrow  "  followed  very  quickly  on  the  first, 
for  be  says  that  it  overtook  him  "on  the  night  of  his  ar- 
rival from  Grasmere  with  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Montagu ;"  while 
in  the  same  breath  and  paragraph,  and  as  though  undoubt- 
edly referring  to  the  same  thing,  he  speaks  of  the  "  de- 
struction of  a  friendship  of  fifteen  years  when,  just  at  the 
moment  of  Fenner  and  Curtis's  (the  publishers)  bankrupt- 
cy "  (by  which  Coleridge  was  a  heavy  loser,  but  which  did 
not  occur  till  seven  years  afterwards),  somebody  indicated 
by  seven  asterisks  and  possessing  an  income  of  £1200  a 
year,  was  "  totally  transformed  into  baseness."  There  is 
certainly  not  much  light  here,  any  more  than  in  the  equal- 
ly enigmatical  description  of  the  third  sorrow  as  being 
"in  some  sort  included  in  the  second,"  so  that  "  what  the 
former  was  to  friendship  the  latter  was  to  a  still  more  in- 
ward bond."  The  truth  is,  that  all  Coleridge's  references 
to  himself  in  his  later  years  are  shrouded  in  a  double  ob- 
scurity. One  veil  is  thrown  over  them  by  his  deliberate 
preference  for  abstract  and  mystical  forms  of  expression, 
and  another  perhaps  by  that  kind  of  shameful  secretive- 
ness  which  grows  upon  all  men  who  become  the  slaves  of 
concealed  indulgences,  and  which  often  displays  itself  on 
occasions  when  it  has  no  real  object  to  gain  of  any  kind 
whatever. 

Thus  much  only  we  know,  that  on  reaching  London  in 
the  summer  of  1810  Coleridge  became  the  guest  of  the 
Montagus,  and  that,  after  some  months'  residence  with 
them,  he  left,  as  the  immediate  result  of  some  difference 
with  his  host  which  was  never  afterwards  composed. 
Whether  it  arose  from  the  somewhat  trivial  cause  to 
which  De  Quincey  has,  admittedly  upon  the  evidence  of 
"the  learned  in  literary  scandal,"  referred  it,  it  is  now  im- 
possible to  say.     But  at  some  time  or  other,  towards  the 


Tin.]  LONDON  AGAIN.  129 

close  probably  of  1810,  or  in  the  early  months  of  1811, 
Coleridge  quitted  Mr.  Montagu's  house  for  that  of  Mr. 
John  Morgan,  a  companion  of  his  early  Bristol  days,  and 
a  common  friend  of  his  and  Southey's  ;  and  here,  at  No.  7 
Portland  Place,  Hammersmith,  he  was  residing  when,  for 
the  second  time,  he  resolved  to  present  himself  to  the 
London  public  in  the  capacity  of  lecturer.  His  services 
were  on  this  occasion  engaged  by  the  London  Philosophi- 
cal Society,  at  Crane  Court,  Fleet  Street,  and  their  pro- 
spectus announced  that  on  Monday,  18th  November,  Mr. 
Coleridge  would  commence  "  a  course  of  lectures  on 
Shakspeare  and  Milton,  in  illustration  of  the  principles 
of  poetry  and  their  application,  on  grounds  of  criticism, 
to  the  most  popular  works  of  later  English  poets,  those 
of  the  living  included.  After  an  introductory  lecture  on 
false  criticism  (especially  in  poetry)  and  on  its  causes,  two- 
thirds  of  the  remaining  course,"  continues  the  prospectus, 
"will  be  assigned,  1st,  to  a  philosophical  analysis  and  ex- 
planation of  all  the  principal  characters  of  our  great  dram- 
atists, as  Othello,  Falstaff,  Richard  the  Third,  Ligo,  Ham- 
let, etc.,  and  to  a  critical  comparison  of  Shakspeare  in 
respect  of  diction,  imagery,  management  of  the  passions, 
judgment  in  the  construction  of  his  dramas — in  short,  of 
all  that  belongs  to  him  as  a  poet,  and  as  a  dramatic  poet, 
with  his  contemporaries  or  immediate  successors,  Jonson, 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Ford,  Massinger,  and  in  the  en- 
deavour to  determine  which  of  Shakspeare's  merits  and 
defects  are  common  to  him,  with  other  writers  of  the 
same  age,  and  what  remain  peculiar  to  his  genius." 

A  couple  of  months  before  the  commencement  of  this 
course,  viz.,  in  September,  1811,  Coleridge  seems  to  have 
entered  into  a  definite  journalistic  engagement  with  his  old 
editor,  Mr.  Daniel  Stuart,  then  the  proprietor  of  the  Con- 


130  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

rier.  It  was  not,  however,  his  first  connection  with  that 
journal.  He  had  ah-eady  published  at  least  one  piece  of 
verse  in  its  columns,  and  two  years  before,  while  the 
Friend  was  still  in  existence,  he  had  contributed  to  it  a 
series  of  letters  on  the  struggle  of  the  Spaniards  against 
their  French  invaders.  In  these,  as  though  to  show  that 
under  the  ashes  of  his  old  democratic  enthusiasm  still  lived 
its  wonted  fires,  and  that  the  inspiration  of  a  popular  cause 
was  only  needed  to  reanimate  them,  we  find,  with  less  of 
the  youthful  lightness  of  touch  and  agility  of  movement, 
a  very  near  approach  to  the  vigour  of  his  early  journal- 
istic days.  Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  historic 
value  of  the  parallel  which  he  institutes  between  the 
straggle  of  the  Low  Countries  against  their  tyrant,  and 
that  of  the  Peninsula  against  its  usurping  conqueror,  it  is 
worked  out  with  remarkable  ingenuity  of  completeness. 
"Whole  pages  of  the  letters  are  radiant  with  that  steady 
flame  of  hatred  which,  ever  since  the  hour  of  his  disillu- 
sionment, had  glowed  in  his  breast  at  the  name  and 
thought  of  Bonaparte  ;  and  whenever  he  speaks  of  the 
Spaniards,  of  Spanish  patriotism,  of  the  Spanish  Cortes, 
we  see  that  the  names  of  "the  people,"  of  "freedom,"  of 
"  popular  assembly,"  have  some  of  their  old  magic  for 
him  still.  The  following  passage  is  almost  pathetic  in  its 
reminder  of  the  days  of  1792,  before  that  modern  Le- 
onidas,  the  young  French  Republic,  had  degenerated  into 
the  Xerxes  of  the  Empire : 

"  The  power  which  raised  up,  established,  and  enriched  the  Dutch 
republic — the  same  mighty  power  is  no  less  at  work  in  the  present 
struggle  of  the  Spanish  nation — a  power  which  mocks  the  calculations 
of  ordinary  statecraft  too  subtle  to  be  weighed  against  it,  and  mere 
outward  brute  force  too  different  from  it  to  admit  of  comparison.  A 
power  as  mighty  in  the  rational  creation  as  the  clement  of  electricity 


vni.]  THE  "COURIER"  ARTICLES.  131 

in  the  material  world  ;  and,  like  that  element,  infinite  in  its  affinities, 
infinite  in  its  mode  of  action,  combining  the  most  discordant  natures, 
fixing  the  most  volatile,  and  arming  tlie  sluggish  vapour  of  the  marsh 
with  arrows  of  fire ;  working  alike  in  silence  and  in  tempest,  in 
growth  and  in  destruction ;  now  contracted  to  an  individual  soul,  and 
now,  as  in  a  moment,  dilating  itself  over  a  whole  nation  !  Am  I  asked 
what  this  mighty  power  may  be,  and  wiierein  it  exists  ?  If  we  are 
worthy  of  the  fame  whicli  we  possess  as  the  countrymen  of  Hamp- 
den, Russell,  and  Algernon  Sidne}',  we  shall  find  the  answer  in  our 
own  hearts.  It  is  the  power  of  the  insulted  free-will,  steadied  by  the 
approving  conscience  and  struggling  against  brute  force  and  iniqui- 
tous compulsion  for  the  common  rights  of  human  nature,  brought 
home  to  our  inmost  souls  by  being,  at  the  same  time,  the  rights  of 
our  betrayed,  insulted,  and  bleeding  country." 

And  as  this  passage  recalls  the  most  striking  character- 
istics of  his  earlier  style,  so  may  its  conclusion  serve  as  a 
fair  specimen  of  the  calmer  eloquence  of  his  later  manner : 

"  It  is  a  painful  truth,  sir,  that  these  men  who  appeal  most  to  facts, 
and  pretend  to  take  them  for  their  exclusive  guide,  are  the  very  per- 
sons who  most  disregard  the  liglit  of  experience  when  it  refers  them 
to  the  mightiness  of  their  own  inner  nature,  in  opposition  to  those 
forces  which  they  can  see  with  their  eyes,  and  reduce  to  figures  upon 
a  slate.  And  yet,  sir,  what  is  history  for  the  greater  and  more  useful 
part  but  a  voice  from  the  sepulchres  of  our  forefathers,  assuring  us, 
from  their  united  experience,  that  our  spirits  are  as  much  stronger 
than  our  bodies  as  they  are  nobler  and  more  permanent?  The  his- 
toric muse  appears  in  her  loftiest  character  as  the  nurse  of  Hope. 
It  is  her  appropriate  praise  that  her  records  enable  the  magnanimous 
to  silence  the  selfish  and  cowardly  by  appealing  to  actual  events  for 
the  information  of  these  truths  wliich  they  themselves  first  learned 
from  the  surer  oracle  of  their  own  reason." 

But  this  reanimation  of  energy  was  but  a  transient  phe- 
nomenon. It  did  not  survive  the  first  freshness  of  its 
exciting  cause.  The  Spanish  insurrection  grew  into  the 
Peninsular  war,  and  though  the  glorious  series  of  Welling- 


132  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

ton's  victories  might  well,  one  would  tbinlc,  have  sustained 
the  rhetorical  temperature  at  its  proper  pitch,  it  failed  to 
do  so.  Or  was  it,  as  the  facts  appear  now  and  then  to 
suggest,  that  Coleridge  at  Grasmere  or  Keswick — Coleridge 
in  the  inspiring  (and  restraining)  companionship  of  close 
friends  and  literary  compeers — was  an  altogether  different 
man  from  Coleridge  in  London,  alone  with  his  thoughts 
and  his  opium?  The  question  cannot  be  answered  with 
confidence,  and  the  fine  quality  of  the  lectures  on  Shake- 
speare is  sufficient  to  show  that,  for  some  time,  at  any  rate, 
after  his  final  migration  to  London,  his  critical  faculty 
retained  its  full  vigour.  But  it  is  beyond  dispute  that  his 
regular  contributions  to  the  Courier  in  1811-12  are  not 
only  vastly  inferior  to  his  articles  of  a  dozen  years  before 
in  the  Morning  Post  but  fall  sensibly  short  of  the  level  of 
the  letters  of  1809,  from  which  extract  has  just  been  made. 
Their  tone  is  spiritless,  and  they  even  lack  distinction  of 
style.  Their  very  subjects,  and  the  mode  of  treating  them, 
appear  to  show  a  change  in  Coleridge's  attitude  towards 
public  affairs  if  not  in  the  very  conditions  of  his  journalis- 
tic employment.  They  have  much  more  of  the  character 
of  newspaper  hack-work  than  his  earlier  contributions.  He 
seems  to  have  been,  in  many  instances,  set  to  write  a  mere 
report,  and  often  a  rather  dry  and  mechanical  report,  of 
this  or  the  other  Peninsular  victory.  He  seldom  or  never 
discusses  the  political  situation,  as  his  wont  has  been,  au 
large ;  and  in  place  of  broad  statesmanlike  reflection  on 
the  scenes  and  actors  in  the  great  world-drama  then  in 
progress,  we  meet  with  too  much  of  that  sort  of  criticism 
on  the  consistency  and  capacity  of  "  our  contemporary,  the 
Morning  Chronicle^''  which  had  less  attraction,  it  may  be 
suspected,  even  for  the  public  of  its  own  day  than  for  the 
journalistic    profession,  while  for  posterity,  of  course,  it 


TiiI.J  THE  "COURIER"  ARTICLES.  133 

possesses  no  interest  at  all.  The  series  of  contributions 
extends  from  September  of  1811  until  April  of  the  follow- 
ing year,  and  appears  to  have  nearly  come  to  a  premature 
and  abrupt  close  in  the  intermediate  July,  when  an  article 
written  by  Coleridge  in  strong  opposition  to  the  proposed 
reinstatement  of  the  Duke  of  York  in  the  command-in- 
chief  was,  by  ministerial  influence,  suppressed  before  pub- 
lication. This  made  Coleridge,  as  his  daughter  informs  us 
on  the  authority  of  Mr.  Crabb  Robinson,  "  very  uncomfort- 
able," and  he  was  desirous  of  being  engaged  on  another 
paper.  He  wished  to  be  connected  with  the  Times,  and 
"I  spoke,"  says  Mr.  Robinson,  "with  Walter  on  the  sub- 
ject, but  the  negotiation  failed." 

^Yith  the  conclusion  of  the  lectures  on  Shakespeare,  and 
the  loss  of  the  stimulus,  slight  as  it  then  was  to  him,  of 
regular  duties  and  recurring  engagements,  Coleridge  seems 
to  have  relapsed  once  more  into  thoroughly  desultory  hab- 
its of  work.  The  series  of  aphorisms  and  reflections  which 
he  contributed  in  1812  to  Southey's  Omniana,  witty,  sug- 
gestive, profound  as  many  of  them  are,  must  not  of  course 
be  referred  to  the  years  in  which  they  were  given  to  the 
world.  They  belong  unquestionably  to  the  order  of  mar- 
ginalia, the  scattered  notes  of  which  De  Quincey  speaks 
with  not  extravagant  admiration,  and  which,  under  the 
busy  pencil  of  a  commentator  always  indefatigable  in 
the  strenua  inertia  of  reading,  had  no  doubt  accumu- 
lated in  considerable  quantities  over  a  long  course  of 
years. 

The  disposal,  however,  of  this  species  of  literary  mate- 
rial could  scarcely  have  been  a  source  of  much  profit  to 
him,  and  Coleridge's  difficulties  of  living  must  by  this  time 
have  been  growing  acute.  His  pension  from  the  Wedg- 
woods had  been  assigned,  his  surviving  son  has  stated,  to 


134  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

the  use  of  his  family,  and  even  this  had  been  in  the  pre- 
vious year  reduced  by  half.  "  In  Coleridge's  neglect,"  ob- 
serves Miss  Meteyard,  "of  his  duties  to  his  wife,  his  chil- 
dren, and  his  friends,  must  be  sought  the  motives  which 
led  Mr.  Wedgwood  in  1811  to  withdraw  his  share  of  the 
annuity.  An  excellent,  even  over-anxious  father,  he  was 
likely  to  be  shocked  at  a  neglect  which  imposed  on  the 
generosity  of  Southey,  himself  heavily  burdened,  those  du- 
ties which  every  man  of  feeling  and  honour  proudly  and 
even  jealously  guards  as  his  own.  .  . .  The  pension  of  £150 
per  annum  had  been  originally  granted  with  the  view  to 
secure  Coleridge  independence  and  leisure  while  he  effected 
some  few  of  his  manifold  projects  of  literary  work.  But 
ten  years  had  passed,  and  these  projects  were  still  in  nubi- 
hus — even  the  life  of  Lessing,  even  the  briefer  memoir  of 
Thomas  Wedgwood;  and  gifts  so  well  intentioned,  had  as 
it  were,  ministered  to  evil  rather  than  to  good."  We  can 
hardly  wonder  at  the  step,  however  we  may  regret  it ;  and 
if  one  of  the  reasons  adduced  in  defence  of  it  savours  some- 
what of  the  fallacy  known  as  a  non  causa  pro  causa,  we  may 
perhaps  attribute  that  rather  to  the  maladroitness  of  Miss 
Meteyard's  advocacy  than  to  the  weakness  of  Mr.  Wedg- 
wood's logic.  The  fact,  however,  that  this  "  excellent,  even 
over-anxious  father  "  was  shocked  at  a  neglect  which  im- 
posed a  burden  on  the  genarosity  of  Southey,  is  hardly  a 
just  ground  for  cutting  off  one  of  the  supplies  by  which 
that  burden  was  partially  relieved.  As  to  the  assignment 
of  the  pension  to  the  family,  it  is  impossible  to  question 
what  has  been  positively  affirmed  by  an  actual  member  of 
that  family,  the  Rev.  Derwent  Coleridge  himself;  though, 
when  he  adds  that  not  only  was  the  school  education  of 
both  the  sons  provided  from  this  source,  but  that  through 
his  (Coleridge's)  influence  they  were  both  sent  to  colk-ge, 


VIII.]  TRODUCTIOX  OF  "EEMORSE."  135 

Ills  statement  is  at  variance,  as  will  be  presently  seen,  with 
an  anthority  equal  to  his  own. 

In  1812,  at  any  rate,  we  may  well  believe  that  Cole- 
ridge's necessities  had  become  pressing,  and  the  timely  ser- 
vice then  rendered  to  him  by  Lord  Byron  may  have  been 
suggested  almost  as  much  by  a  knowledge  of  his  needs  as 
by  admiration  for  the  dramatic  merits  of  his  long-since 
rejected  tragedy.  Osorio's  time  had  at  any  rate  come. 
The  would-be  fratricide  changed  his  name  to  Ordonio,  and 
ceased  to  stand  sponsor  to  the  play,  which  was  rechristened 
Hemorsc,  and  accepted  at  last,  upon  Byron's  recommen- 
dation, by  the  committee  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  the  play- 
house at  whose  doors  it  had  knocked  vainly  fifteen  years 
l)cfore  it  was  performed  there  for  the  first  time  on  the 
2:3d  of  January,  1813.  The  prologue  and  epilogue,  with- 
out which  in  those  times  no  gentleman's  drama  was  ac- 
counted complete,  vv'as  written,  the  former  by  Charles 
Lamb,  the  latter  by  the  author  himself.  It  obtained  a 
brilliant  success  on  its  first  representation,  and  was  hon- 
oured with  what  was  in  those  days  regarded  as  the  very 
respectable  run  of  twenty  nights. 

The  success,  however,  which  came  so  opportunely  for 
Ills  material  necessities  was  too  late  to  produce  any  good 
effect  upon  Coleridge's  mental  state.  But  a  month  after 
the  production  of  his  tragedy  wc  find  him  writing  in  the 
most  dismal  strain  of  hypochondria  to  Thomas  Poole. 
The  only  pleasurable  sensation  which  the  success  of  Re- 
morse had  given  him  was,  he  declares,  the  receipt  of  his 
friend's  "  heart-engendered  lines  "  of  congratulation.  "  No 
grocer's  apprentice,  after  his  first  month's  permitted  riot, 
was  ever  sicker  of  figs  and  raisins  than  I  of  hearing  about 
the  Remorse.  The  endless  rat-a-tat-tat  at  our  black-and-blue 
bruised  doors,  and  my  three  master- fiends,  proof- sheets, 
K      7 


136  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

letters,  and — worse  than  these — invitations  to  large  din- 
ners, which  I  cannot  refuse  without  offence  and  imputa- 
tion of  pride,  etc.,  oppress  me  so  much  that  my  spirits 
quite  sink  under  it.  I  have  never  seen  the  play  since 
the  first  night.  It  has  been  a  good  thing  for  the  theatre. 
They  will  get  eight  or  ten  thousand  pounds  by  it,  and 
I  shall  get  more  than  by  all  my  literary  labours  put  to- 
getlier — nay,  thrice  as  much."  So  large  a  sura  of  money 
as  this  must  have  amounted  to  should  surely  have  lasted 
him  for  years;  but  the  particular  species  of  intemperance 
to  which  he  was  now  hopelessly  enslaved  is  probably  the 
most  costly  of  all  forms  of  such  indulgence,  and  it  seems 
pretty  evident  that  the  proceeds  of  his  theatrical  coup 
were  consumed  in  little  more  than  a  year. 

Early  in  1814,  at  any  rate,  Coleridge  once  more  returned 
to  his  old  occupation  of  lecturer,  and  this  time  not  in 
London,  but  in  the  scene  of  his  first  appearance  in  that 
capacity.  The  lectures  which  he  proposed  to  deliver  at 
Bristol  were,  in  fact,  a  repetition  of  the  course  of  1811- 
12  ;  but  the  ways  of  the  lecturer,  to  judge  from  an  amus' 
ing  story  recorded  by  Cottle,  more  nearly  resembled  his 
proceedings  in  1808.  A  "brother  of  Mr.  George  Cum- 
berland," who  happened  to  be  his  fellow-traveller  to  Bris- 
tol on  this  occasion,  relates  that  before  the  coach  started 
Coleridge's  attention  was  attracted  by  a  little  Jew  boy 
selling  pencils,  with  whom  he  entered  into  conversation, 
and  with  Avhose  superior  qualities  he  was  so  impressed  as 
to  declare  that  "  if  he  had  not  an  important  engagement 
at  Bristol  he  would  stay  behind  to  provide  some  better 
condition  for  the  lad."  The  coach  having  started,  "  the 
gentleman  "  (for  his  name  was  unknown  to  the  narrator 
of  the  incident)  "  talked  incessantly  and  in  a  most  enter- 
taining way  for  thirty  miles  out  of  London,  and,  after- 


VIII.]  AT  BRISTOL  AS  LECTURER.  U1 

wards,  with  little  intermission  till  they  reached  Marlbor- 
ough," when  he  discovered  that  a  lady  in  the  coach  with 
him  was  a  particular  friend  of  his;  and  on  arriving  at 
Bath  he  quitted  the  coach  declaring  that  he  was  deter- 
mined not  to  leave  her  till  he  had  seen  her  safe  to  her 
brother's  door  in  North  Wales.  This  was  the  day  fixed 
for  the  delivery  of  Coleridge's  first  lecture.  Two  or  three 
days  afterwards,  having  completed  his  detour  by  North 
Wales,  he  arrived  at  Bristol ;  another  day  was  fixed  for 
the  commencement  of  the  course,  and  Coleridge  then  pre- 
sented  himself  an  hour  after  the  audience  had  taken  their 
seats.  The  "important  engagement"  might  be  broken, 
it  seems,  for  a  mere  whim,  though  not  for  a  charitable 
impulse — a  distinction  testifying  to  a  mixture  of  insincer- 
ity and  unpunctuality  not  pleasant  to  note  as  an  evidence 
of  the  then  state  of  Coleridge's  emotions  and  will. 

Thus  inauspiciously  commenced,  there  was  no  reason 
why  the  Bristol  lectures  of  1814  should  be  more  success- 
ful than  the  London  Institution  lectures  of  1808;  nor 
were  they,  it  appears,  in  fact.  They  arc  said  to  have 
been  "sparsely  attended" — no  doubt  owing  to  the  natural 
unwillingness  of  people  to  pay  for  an  hour's  contempla- 
tion of  an  empty  platform ;  and  their  pecuniary  returns 
in  consequence  were  probably  insignificant.  Coleridge 
remained  in  Bristol  till  the  month  of  August,  when  he 
returned  to  London. 

The  painful  task  of  tracing  his  downward  course  is  now 
almost  completed.  Li  the  middle  of  this  year  he  touched 
the  lowest  point  of  his  descent.  Cottle,  who  had  a  good 
deal  of  intercourse  with  him  by  speech  and  letter  in  1814, 
and  who  had  not  seen  him  since  1807,  was  shocked  by 
his  extreme  prostration,  and  then  for  the  first  time  ascer- 
tained the  cause.     "  In  1814,"  he  says  in  his  Recollections, 


138  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

"  S.  T.  C.  liad  been  long,  very  long,  in  tlic  liabit  of  taking 
from  two  quarts  of  laudanum  a  week  to  a  pint  a  day,  and 
on  one  occasion  lie  had  been  known  to  take  in  the  twenty- 
four  Lours  a  whole  quart  of  laudanum.  The  serious  ex- 
penditure of  money  resulting  from  this  habit  was,  the  least 
evil,  though  very  great,  and  must  have  absorbed  all  the 
produce  of  his  writings  and  lectures  and  the  liberalities  of 
his  friends."  Cottle  addressed  to  him  a  letter  of  not  very 
delicate  remonstrance  on  the  subject,  to  which  Coleritigc 
replied  in  his  wontedly  humble  strain. 

There  is  a  certain  Pharisaism  about  the  Bristol  poet- 
publisher  which  renders  it  necessary  to  exercise  some  lit- 
tle caution  in  the  acceptance  of  his  account  of  Coleridge's 
condition ;  but  the  facts,  from  whatever  source  one  seeks 
them,  appear  to  acquit  him  of  any  exaggeration  in  his 
summing  up  of  the  melancholy  matter.  "A  general  im- 
pression," he  says,  "  prevailed  on  the  minds  of  Coleridge's 
friends  that  it  was  a  desperate  case,  that  paralysed  all  their 
efforts ;  that  to  assist  Coleridge  with  money  which,  under 
favourable  circumstances  would  have  been  most  promptly 
advanced,  would  now  only  enlarge  his  capacity  to  obtain 
the  opium  which  was  consuming  him.  We  merely  knew 
that  Coleridge  had  retired  with  his  friend,  Mr.  John  Mor- 
gan, to  a  small  house  at  Calne,  in  Wiltshire." 

It  must  have  been  at  Calne,  then,  that  Coleridge  com- 
posed the  scries  of  "  Letters  to  Mr.  Justice  Fletcher  con- 
cerning his  charge  to  the  Grand  Jury  of  the  county  of 
Wexford,  at  the  summer  Assizes  in  1814,"  which  appeared 
at  intervals  in  the  Courier  between  20th  September  and 
10th  December  of  this  year.  Their  subject,  a  somewhat 
injndicipnsly  animated  address  to  the  aforesaid  Grand 
Jury  on  the  subject  of  the  relations  between  Catholicism 
and  Protestantism  in  Ireland,  was  well  calculated  to  stimu- 


VIII.]  KESIDENCE  AT  CALNE.  139 

late  the  literary  activity  of  a  man  who  always  took  some- 
thing of  the  keen  interest  of  the  modern  Radical  in  the 
eternal  Irish  question ;  and  the  letters  are  not  wanting 
either  in  argumentative  force  or  in  grave  impressiveness 
of  style.  But  their  lack  of  spring  and  energy,  as  com- 
pared with  Coleridge's  earlier  work  in  journalism,  is  pain- 
fully visible  throughout. 

Calne,  it  is  to  be  supposed,  was  still  Coleridge's  place 
of  abode  when  Southey  (iTth  October)  wrote  Cottle  that 
letter  which  appears  in  his  Corresjwndence,  and  which  il- 
lustrates with  such  sad  completeness  the  contrast  between 
the  careers  of  the  two  generous,  romantic,  brilliant  youths 
who  had  wooed  their  wives  together  —  and  bctv/een  the 
fates,  one  must  add,  of  the  two  sisters  who  had  listened 
to  their  wooing — eighteen  years  before :  a  letter  as  hon- 
ourable to  the  writer  as  it  is  the  reverse  to  its  subject. 
"  Can  you,"  asks  Southey,  "  tell  me  anything  of  Coleridge? 

A  few  lines  of  introduction  for  a  son  of  Mi". ,  of  St. 

James's,  in  your  city,  are  all  that  we  have  received  from 
him  since  I  saw  him  last  September  twelvemonth  (1813) 
in  town.  The  children  being  thus  left  entirely  to  chance, 
I  have  applied  to  his  brothers  at  Ottey  (Ottery  ?)  concern- 
ing them,  and  am  in  hopes  through  their  means  and  the 
assistance  of  other  friends  of  sending  Hartley  to  college. 
Lady  Beaumont  has  promised  £30  a  year  for  the  pur- 
pose, and  Poole  £10.  I  wrote  to  Coleridge  three  or  four 
months  ago,  telling  him  that  unless  he  took  some  steps 
in  providing  for  this  object  I  must  make  the  application, 
and  required  his  answer  within  a  given  terra  of  three  weeks. 
lie  received  th-e  letter,  and  in  his  note  by  Mr.  prom- 
ised to  answer  it,  but  he  has  never  taken  any  further 
notice  of  it.  I  have  acted  with  the  advice  of  Words- 
worth.    The  brothers,  as  I  expected,  promise  their  con- 


140  COLERIDGE.  [ni.u-. 

curi'cncc,  and  I  daily  expect  a  letter  stating  to  what  extent 
tlicy  will  contribute."  With  this  letter  before  him  an  im- 
partial biographer  can  hardly  be  expected  to  adopt  the 
theory  which  has  commended  itself  to  the  filial  piety  of 
the  Rev.  Derwent  Coleridge — namely,  that  it  was  through 
the  father's  "  influence"  that  the  sons  were  sent  to  college. 
On  a  plain  matter  of  fact  such  as  this,  one  may  be  per- 
mitted, without  indelicacy,  to  uj)hold  the  conclusions  com- 
pelled by  the  evidence.  Such  expressions  of  opinion,  on 
the  other  hand,  as  that  Coleridge's  "  separation  from  his 
family,  brought  about  and  continued  through  the  force 
of  circumstances  over  which  he  had  far  less  control  than 
has  been  commonly  supposed,  was  in  fact  nothing  else  but 
an  over-prolonged  absence ;"  and  that  "  from  first  to  last 
he  took  an  affectionate,  it  may  be  said  a  passionate,  inter- 
est in  the  welfare  of  his  children  " —  such  expressions  of 
mere  opinion  as  these  it  may  be  proper  enough  to  pass  by 
in  respectful  silence. 

The  following  year  brought  with  it  no  improvement  in 
the  embarrassed  circumstances,  no  reform  of  the  disordered 
life.  Still  domiciled  with  Mr.  Morgan  at  Calne,  the  self- 
made  sufferer  writes  to  Cottle :  "  You  will  wish  to  tnow 
something  of  myself.  In  health  I  am  not  worse  than 
when  at  Bristol  I  was  best ;  yet  fluctuating,  yet  unhappy, 
in  circumstances  poor  indeed  1  I  have  collected  my  scat- 
tered and  my  manuscript  poems  sufficient  to  mate  one 
volume.  Enough  I  have  to  make  another.  But,  till  the 
latter  is  finished,  I  cannot,  without  great  loss  of  character, 
publish  the  former,  on  account  of  the  arrangement,  be- 
sides the  necessity  of  correction.  For  instance,  I  earnest- 
ly wish  to  begin  the  volumes  with  what  has  never  been 
seen  by  any,  however  few,  such  as  a  series  of  odes  on  the 
different  sentences  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  and,  more  than 


Till.]  COLERIDGE  AND  BYRON.  141 

all  this,  to  finish  my  greater  work  on  *  Christianity  con- 
sidered as  philosophy,  and  as  the  only  philosophy.'" 
Then  follows  a  request  for  a  loan  of  forty  pounds  on  the 
security  of  the  MSS.,  an  advance  which  Cottle  declined 
to  make,  though  he  sent  Coleridge  "  some  smaller  tem- 
porary relief."  The  letter  concludes  with  a  reference  to 
a  project  for  taking  a  house  and  receiving  pupils  to  board 
and  instruct,  which  Cottle  appeared  to  consider  the  crown- 
ing "degradation  and  ignominy  of  all." 

A  few  days  later  we  find  Lord  Byron  again  coming  to 
Coleridge's  assistance  with  a  loan  of  a  hundred  pounds 
and  words  of  counsel  and  encouragement.  Why  should 
not  the  author  of  Remorse  repeat  his  success  ?  "  In  Kean," 
writes  Byron,  "  there  is  an  actor  worthy  of  expressing  the 
thoughts  of  the  character  which  you  have  every  power  of 
embodying,  and  I  cannot  but  regret  that  the  part  of  Or- 
donio  was  disposed  of  before  his  appearance  at  Drury 
Lane.  We  have  had  nothing  to  be  mentioned  in  the 
same  breath  with  Remorse  for  very  many  years,  and  I 
should  think  that  the  reception  of  that  play  was  sufficient 
to  encourage  the  highest  hopes  of  author  and  audience." 
The  advice  was  followed,  and  the  drama  of  Zapolya  was 
the  result.  It  is  a  work  of  even  less  dramatic  strength 
than  its  predecessor,  and  could  scarcely,  one  thinks,  have 
been  as  successful  with  an  audience.  It  was  not,  how- 
ever, destined  to  see  the  footlights.  Before  it  had  passed 
the  tribunal  of  the  Drury  Lane  Committee  it  had  lost  the 
benefit  of  Byron's  patronage  through  the  poet's  departure 
from  England,  and  the  play  was  rejected  by  Mr.  Douglas 
Kinnaird,  the  then  reader  for  the  theatre,  who  assigned,  ac- 
cording to  Mr.  Gillman,  "  some  ludicrous  objections  to  the 
metaphysics."  Before  leaving  England,  however,  Byron 
rendered  a  last,  and,  as  the  result  proved,  a  not  unimpor- 


142  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

tant  service  to  las  brotlaer-poet.  lie  introduced  Lim  to 
Mr.  Murraj',  who,  in  the  following  year,  undertook  the  pub- 
lication of  Christahel — the  most  successful,  in  the  sense  of 
the  most  popular,  of  all  its  author's  productions  in  verse. 

With  the  coming  of  spring  in  the  following  year  that 
dreary  story  of  slow  self-destruction,  into  which  the  narra- 
tive of  Coleridge's  life  from  the  age  of  thirty  to  that  of 
forty-five  resolves  itself,  was  brought  to  a  close.  Coleridge 
had  at  last  perceived  that  his  only  hope  of  redemption  lay 
in  a  voluntary  submission  of  his  enfeebled  will  to  the  con- 
trol of  others,  and  he  had  apparently  just  enough  strength 
of  volition  to  form  and  execute  the  necessary  resolve.  He 
appears,  in  the  first  instance,  to  have  consulted  a  physician 
of  the  name  of  Adams,  who,  on  the  9th  of  April,  1816,  put 
himself  in  communication  with  Mr.  Gillman,  of  Ilighgate. 
"A  very  learned,  but  in  one  respect  an  unfortunate  gentle- 
man, has,"  he  wrote,  "  applied  to  me  on  a  singular  occa- 
sion. Ho  has  for  several  years  been  in  the  habit  of  talcing 
large  quantities  of  opium.  For  some  time  past  he  has 
been  in  vain  endeavouring  to  break  himself  of  it.  It  is 
apprehended  his  friends  are  not  firm  enough,  from  a 
dread  lest  he  should  suffer  by  suddenly  leaving  it  off, 
though  he  is  conscious  of  the  contrary,  and  has  pro- 
posed to  me  to  submit  himself  to  any  regimen,  however 
severe.  With  this  view  he  wishes  to  fix  himself  in  the 
house  of  some  medical  gentleman  who  will  have  the  cour- 
age to  refuse  him  any  laudanum,  and  under  whose  assist- 
ance, should  he  be  the  worse  for  it,  he  may  be  relieved." 
Would  such  a  proposal,  inquires  the  writer,  be  absolutely 
inconsistent  with  Mr.  Gilhnan's  family  arrangements?  He 
would  not,  he  adds,  have  proposed  it  "  but  on  account  of 
the  great  importance  of  the  character  as  a  literary  man. 
His  communicative  temper  will  make  his  society  very  in- 


Till.]  AT  MR.  GILLMAN'S.  143 

teresting  as  well  as  useful."  Mr.  Gillinan's  acquaintance 
with  Dr.  Adams  was  but  slight,  and  he  bad  bad  no  pre- 
vious intention  of  receiving  an  inmate  into  bis  bouse.  But 
the  case  very  naturally  interested  bira  ;  be  sought  an  inter- 
view with  Dr.  Adams,  and  it  was  agreed  that  the  latter 
sbould  drive  Coleridge  to  Iligbgate  the  following  evening. 
At  the  appointed  hour,  however,  Coleridge  presented  him- 
bimself  alone,  and,  after  spending  the  evening  at  Mr.  Gill- 
man's,  left  him,  as  even  in  bis  then  condition  be  left  most 
people  who  met  him  for  the  first  time,  completely  capti- 
vated by  the  amiability  of  bis  manners  and  the  charm  of 
his  conversation.  The  next  day  Mr.  Gilhiian  received  from 
him  a  letter  finally  settling  the  arrangement  to  place  him- 
self under  tlie  doctor's  care,  and  concluding  with  the  fol- 
lowing pathetic  passage : 

"And  now  of  myself.  My  ever  wakeful  reason  and  the  keenness 
of  my  moral  feelings  will  seeurc  you  from  all  unpleasant  circum- 
stances connected  with  me  save  only  one,  viz.,  the  evasion  of  a  spe- 
cific madness.  You  will  never  Jiear  anything  but  truth  from  me ; 
prior  habits  render  it  out  of  my  power  to  tell  an  untruth,  but,  unless 
carefully  observed,  I  dare  not  promise  that  I  should  not,  with  regard 
to  this  detested  poison,  be  capable  of  acting  one.  Not  sixty  hours 
have  yet  passed  without  my  having  taken  laudanum,  though,  for  the 
last  week,  comparatively  trifling  doses.  I  have  full  belief  that  your 
anxiety  need  not  be  extended  beyond  the  first  week,  and  for  the  first 
week  I  shall  not,  must  not,  be  permitted  to  leave  your  house,  unless 
with  you  ;  delicately  or  indelicately,  this  must  be  done,  and  both  the 
servants,  and  the  assistant,  must  i-eceive  absolute  commands  from 
you.  The  stimulus  of  conversation  suspends  the  terror  that  haunts 
my  mind ;  but,  when  I  am  alone,  the  horrors  I  have  suffered  from 
laudanum,  the  degradation,  the  blighted  utility,  almost  overwdielm 
me.  If  (as  I  feel  for  the  Jirst  iitne  a  soothing  confidence  that  it  will 
prove)  I  should  leave  you  restored  to  my  moral  and  bodily  health,  it 
is  not  myself  only  that  will  love  and  honour  you  ;  every  friend  I  have 
(and,  thank  God!  in  spite  of  this  wretched  vice  I  iiave  many  and 


144  COLERIDGE.  [chap.  viii. 

warm  ones,  who  were  friends  of  my  youth,  and  have  never  deserted 
rac)  will  thank  you  with  reverence.  I  have  taken  no  notice  of  your 
kind  apologies.  If  I  could  not  be  comfortable  in  your  house  and 
with  your  family,  I  should  deserve  to  be  miserable." 

This  letter  was  written  on  a  Saturday,  and  on  the  fol- 
lowing Monday  Coleridge  presented  himself  at  Mr.  Gill- 
man's,  bringing  in  his  hand  the  proof-sheets  of  Christabel, 
now  printed  for  the  first  time.  lie  had  looked,  as  the  let- 
ter just  quoted  shows,  with  a  "soothing  confidence"  to 
leaving  his  retreat  at  some  future  period  in  a  restored  con- 
dition of  moral  and  bodily  health ;  and  as  regards  the  res- 
toration, his  confidence  was  in  a  great  measure  justified. 
But  the  friendly  doors  which  opened  to  receive  him  on 
this  15th  of  April,  1816,  were  destined  to  close  only  upon 
his  departing  bier.  Under  the  watchful  and  almost  rever- 
ential care  of  this  well -chosen  guardian,  sixteen  years  of 
comparatively  quiet  and  well-ordered  life,  of  moderate  but 
effective  literary  activity,  and  of  gradual  though  never 
complete  emancipation  from  his  fatal  habit,  were  reserved 
to  him.  lie  had  still,  as  we  shall  see,  to  undergo  certain 
recurrences  of  restlessness  and  renewals  of  pecuniary  diffi- 
culty ;  his  shattered  health  was  but  imperfectly  and  tem- 
porarily repaired ;  his  "  shaping  spirit  of  imagination " 
could  not  and  did  not  return ;  his  transcendental  brood- 
ings  became  more  and  more  the  "  habit  of  his  soul."  But 
henceforth  he  recovers  for  us  a  certain  measure  of  his  long- 
lost  dignity,  and  a  figure  which  should  always  have  been 
"  meet  for  the  reverence  of  the  hearth"  in  the  great  house- 
hold of  English  literature,  but  which  had  far  too  long  and 
too  deeply  sunk  below  it,  becomes  once  more  a  worthy 
and  even  a  venerable  presence.  At  evening-time  it  was 
lio:ht. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

LIFE  AT  HIGHGATE.— RENEWED  ACTIVITY. — PUBLICATIONS  AND 
KEPUBLICATIONS. — THE  "  BIOGRAPIIIA  LITERARIA."  —  THE 
LECTURES  OF  1818.— COLERIDGE  AS  A  SHAKESPEARIAN  CRITIC. 

[1816-1818.] 

The  results  of  tlie  step  wliich  Coleridge  had  just  taken 
became  speedily  visible  in  more  ways  than  one,  and  the 
public  were  among  the  first  to  derive  benefit  from  it.  For 
not  only  was  he  stimulated  to  greater  activity  of  produc- 
tion, but  his  now  more  methodical  way  of  life  gave  him 
time  and  inclination  for  that  work  of  arrangement  and 
preparation  for  the  press  which,  distasteful  to  most  writ- 
ers, was  no  doubt  especially  irksome  to  him,  and  thus  in- 
sured the  publication  of  many  pieces  which  otherwise 
might  never  have  seen  the  light.  The  appearance  of 
Christahel  was,  as  we  have  said,  received  with  signal 
marks  of  popular  favour,  three  editions  being  called  for 
and  exhausted  in  the  same  year.  In  1816  there  appeared 
also  The  Statesman's  Manual ;  or  the  Bible  the  best  guide 
to  Political  Skill  and  Foresight:  a  Lag  Sermon  addressed 
to  the  higher  classes  of  Socieig,  with  an  Appendix  contain- 
ing Comments  and  Essays  connected  with  the  Study  of 
the  Inspired  Writings;  in  1817  another  Lay  Sermon,  ad- 
dressed to  the  higher  and  middle  classes  on  the  existing 
distresses  and  discontents  ;  and  in  the  same  year  followed 


140  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

the  most  important  publication  of  tliis  period,  tlie  Blo- 
graplila  Lileraria. 

In  1817,  too,  it  was  that  Coleridge  at  iast  made  his 
long-meditated  collection  and  classification  of  his  already 
published  poems,  and  that  for  the  first  time  something 
approaching  to  a  complete  edition  of  the  poet's  works  was 
given  to  the  world.  The  SibtjUine  Leaves^  as  this  reissue 
was  called,  had  been  intended  to  be  preceded  by  another 
volume  of  verse,  and  "  accordingly  on  the  printer's  signa- 
tures of  every  sheet  we  find  Vol.  II.  appearing,"  Too 
characteristically,  however,  the  scheme  was  abandoned,  and 
Volume  II.  emerged  from  the  press  without  any  Volume  I. 
to  accompany  it.  The  drama  of  Zapolt/a  followed  in  the 
same  year,  and  proved  more  successful  with  the  public 
than  with  the  critic  of  Drury  Lane.  The  "  general  reader  " 
assigned  no  "  ludicrous  objections  to  its  metaphysics ;" 
on  the  contrary,  he  took  them  on  trust,  as  his  generous 
manner  is,  and  Zapolya,  published  thus  as  a  Chrir-tmas 
tale,  became  so  immediatel}'^  popular  that  two  thousand 
copies  were  sold  in  six  weeks.  In  the  year  1818  followed 
the  three-volume  selection  of  essays  from  the  Friend,  a  re- 
issue to  which  reference  has  already  been  n;ade.  With 
the  exception  of  Christabel,  however,  all  the  publications 
of  these  three  years  unfortunately  proceeded  from  the 
house  of  Gale  and  Fenner,  a  firm  which  shortly  afterwards 
became  bankrupt ;  and  Coleridge  thus  lost  all  or  nearly 
all  of  the  profits  of  their  sale. 

The  most  important  of  the  new  works  of  this  period 
was,  as  has  been  said,  the  Biographia  Lileraria.,  or,  to  give 
it  its  other  title.  Biographical  Sketches  of  my  Literary 
Life  and  Op>inio7is.  Its  interest,  however,  is  wholly  crit- 
ical and  illustrative;  as  a  narrative  it  would  be  fouYid  ex- 
tremely disappointing  and  probably  iriitating  by  the  aver- 


IX.]  RENEWED  ACTIVITY.  147 

age  reader.  With  tlic  exception  of  one  or  two  incidental 
disclosures,  but  little  biog-rapliical  information  is  to  be  de- 
rived from  it  which  is  not  equally  accessible  from  sources 
independent  of  the  author ;  and  the  almost  complete  want 
of  sequence  and  arrangement  renders  it  a  very  inconven- 
ient work  of  reference  even  for  these  few  biographical  de- 
tails. Its  main  value  is  to  be  found  in  the  contents  of 
seven  chapters,  from  the  fourteenth  to  the  twentieth;  but 
it  is  not  going  too  far  to  say  that,  in  respect  of  these,  it  is 
literally  priceless.  No  such  analysis  of  the  principles  of 
poetry — no  such  exact  discrimination  of  what  was  sound 
in  the  modern  "return-to-nature"  movement  from  what 
was  false — has  ever  been  accomplished  by  any  other  crit- 
ic, or  with  such  admirable  completeness  by  this  consum- 
mate critic  at  any  other  time.  Undoubtedly  it  is  not  of 
the  light  order  of  reading;  none,  or  very  little,  of  Cole- 
ridge's prose  is.  The  whole  of  Chapter  XV.,  for  instance, 
in  which  the  specific  elements  of  "poetic  power"  arc 
"distinguished  from  general  talent  determined  to  poetic 
composition  by  accidental  motives,"  requires  a  close  and 
sustained  effort  of  the  attention,  but  those  who  bestow 
it  will  find  it  amply  repaid.  I  know  of  no  dissertation 
conceived  and  carried  out  in  terms  of  the  abstract  which 
in  the  result  so  triumphantly  justifies  itself  upon  applica- 
tion to  concrete  cases.  As  regards  the  question  of  poetic 
expression,  and  the  laws  by  which  its  true  form  is  deter- 
mined, Coleridge's  analysis  is,  it  seems  to  me,  final.  I 
cannot,  at  least,  after  the  most  careful  reflection  upon  it, 
conceive  it  as  being  other  than  the  absolutely  last  word  on 
the  subject.  Reasoning  and  illustration  are  alike  so  con- 
vincing that  the  rcailcr,  like  the  contentious  student  who 
listened  unwillingly  to  his  professor's  demonstration  of  the 
first  proposition  of  Euclid,  is  compelled   to  confess  that 


148  COLERIDGE.  [ciiap. 

"he  Las  notliing  to  reply."  To  the  judicious  admirer  of 
Wordsworth,  to  every  one  who,  while  recognising  Words- 
worth's inestimable  services  to  English  literature  as  the 
leader  of  the  naturalist  reaction  in  poetry,  has  yet  been 
vaguely  conscious  of  the  defect  in  his  poetic  theory,  and 
very  keenly  conscious  of  the  vices  of  his  poetic  practice — 
to  all  such  persons  it  must  be  a  profound  relief  and  satis- 
faction to  be  guided  as  unerringly  as  Coleridge  guides 
them  to  the  "  parting  of  the  ways  "  of  truth  and  falsity 
in  Wordsworth's  doctrines,  and  to  be  enabled  to  perceive 
that  nothing  which  has  offended  him  in  that  poet's  thought 
and  diction  has  any  real  connection  with  whatever  in  the 
poet's  principles  has  commanded  his  assent.  There  is  no 
one  who  has  ever  felt  uneasy  under  the  blasphemies  of  the 
enemy  but  must  entertain  deep  gratitude  for  so  complete 
a  discharge  as  Coleridge  has  procured  him  from  the  task 
of  defending  such  lines  as — 

"And  I  liave  travelled  far  as  Hull  to  see 
What  clothes  he  might  have  left  or  other  property." 

Defend  them  indeed  the  ordinary  reader  probably  would 
not,  preferring  even  the  abandonment  of  his  theory  to  a 
task  so  humiliating.  But  the  theory  has  so  much  of  truth 
and  value  in  it  that  the  critic  who  has  redeemed  it  from 
the  discredit  of  Wordsworth's  misapplications  of  it  is  en- 
titled to  the  thanks  of  every  friend  of  simplicity,  who  is 
at  the  same  time  an  enemy  of  bathos.  There  is  no  longer 
any  reason  to  treat  the  deadly  commonplaces,  amid  which 
we  toil  through  so  many  jiages  of  the  Excursion,  as  hav- 
ing any  true  theoretic  affinity  with  its  but  too  occasional 
majestic  interludes.  The  smooth,  square -cut  blocks  of 
prose  which  insult  the  natural  beauty  of  poetic  rock  and 
boulder  even  in  such  a  scene  of  naked  moorland  grandeur 


IX.]  rUBLICATIOXS  AND  REPUBLICATIONS.  149 

as  that  of  Resolution  and  Independence  are  seen  and  sliown 
to  be  the  mere  intruders  which  we  have  all  felt  them  to 
be.  To  the  Wordsworthian,  anxious  for  a  full  justifica- 
tion of  the  faith  that  is  in  him,  t!ie  whole  body  of  Cole- 
ridge's criticism  on  his  friend's  poetry  in  the  Blographia 
Literaria  mav  be  confidently  recommended.  The  refu- 
tation of  what  is  untenable  in  Wordsworth's  theory,  the 
censure  pronounced  upon  certain  characteristics  of  Lis 
practice,  are  made  all  the  more  impressive  by  the  tone  of 
cordial  admiration  which  distinguishes  every  personal  ref- 
erence to  the  poet  liitnself,  and  by  the  unfailing  discrim- 
ination with  which  the  critic  singles  out  the  peculiar  beau- 
ties of  his  poetr\'.  No  finer  selection  of  finely  character- 
istic Words\vorthi;m  passages  could  perhaps  have  been 
made  than  those  which  Coleridge  has  quoted  in  illustra- 
tion of  his  criticisms  in  the  eighteenth  and  two  following 
chapters  of  the  Biographia  Literaria.  For  the  rest,  how- 
ever, unless  indeed  one  excei)ts  the  four  chapters  on  the 
Hartleian  system  and  its  relation  to  the  German  school  of 
philosophy,  the  boolc  is  rather  one  to  be  dipped  into  for 
the  peculiar  pleasure  which  an  hour  in  Coleridge's  com- 
pany must  always  give  to  any  active  intelligence,  than  to 
be  systematically  studied  with  a  view  to  perfecting  one's 
conception  of  Coleridge's  philosophical  and  critical  genius 
considered  in  its  totality. 

As  to  the  two  lay  sermons,  the  less  ambitious  of  them 
is  decidedly  the  more  successful.  The  advice  to  "  the 
higher  and  middle  classes"  on  the  existing  distresses  and 
discontents  contains  at  least  an  ingredient  of  the  practi- 
cal;  its  distinctively  religious  appeals  are  varied  by  sound 
political  and  economical  arguments ;  and  the  enumeration 
and  exposure  of  the  various  artifices  by  which  most  ora- 
tors are  accustomed  to  delude  their  hearers  is  as  masterly 


150  COLEraDCE.  [chap. 

as  only  Coleridge  could  have  invade  it.  Who  but  he,  for 
instance,  could  have  thrown  a  piece  of  subtle  observation 
into  a  form  in  which  reason  and  fancy  unite  so  happily 
to  impress  it  on  the  mind  as  in  the  following  passage: 
"  The  mere  appeal  to  the  auditors,  whether  the  arguments 
are  not  such  that  none  but  an  idiot  or  an  hireling  could 
resist,  is  an  effective  substitute  for  any  argument  at  all. 
For  mobs  have  no  memories.  They  are  in  nearly  the 
same  state  as  that  of  an  individual  when  he  makes  what 
is  termed  a  bull.  The  2xxssions,  like  a  fused  metal,  Jill  up 
the  ivide  interstices  of  thought  and  supply  the  defective  links  ; 
and  thus  incoinjjatible  assertions  are  harmonised  hy  the  sen- 
sation icithout  the  sense  of  connection.''''  The  other  lay  ser- 
mon, however,  the  Statesman'' s  Manual,  is  less  appropri- 
ately conceived.  Its  originating  proposition,  that  the  Bible 
is  "the  best  guide  to  political  skill  and  foresight,"  is  un- 
doubtedly open  to  dispute,  but  might  nevertheless  be  capa- 
ble of  plausible  defence  upon  a  priori  grounds.  Coleridge, 
however,  is  not  content  with  this  method  of  procedure;  as, 
indeed,  with  so  avowedly  practical  an  object  in  view  he 
scarcely  could  be,  for  a  "  manual "  is  essentially  a  work 
intended  for  the  constant  consultation  of  the  artificer  in 
the  actual  performance  of  his  work,  and  ought  at  least  to 
contain  illustrations  of  the  application  of  its  general  prin- 
ciples to  particular  cases.  It  is  in  undertaking  to  supply 
these  that  the  essential  mysticism  of  Coleridge's  counsels 
comes  to  light.  For  instance:  "I  am  deceived  if  you  will 
not  be  compelled  to  admit  that  the  prophet  Isaiah  revealed 
the  true  philosophy  of  the  French  Revolution  more  than 
two  thousand  years  before  it  became  a  sad  irrevocable 
truth  of  history.  '  And  thou  saidst,  I  shall  be  a  lady  for 
ever,  so  that  thou  didst  not  lay  these  things  to  thy  heart 
ni'ithcr  didst   remember  the  latter  end  of  it.  .  .  .  There- 


IX.]  THE  LECTURES  OF  1818.  ir.l 

fore  shall  evil  come  upon  tlice ;  tliou  shalt  not  know  from 
■whence  it  riseth,  etc'  "  And  to  this  last-quoted  sentence 
Coleridge  actually  appends  the  following  note :  "  The 
reader  will  scarcely  fail  to  find  in  this  verse  a  remem- 
brancer of  the  sudden  setting*  in  of  the  frost  before  the 
usual  time  (in  a  country,  too,  where  the  commencement  of 
its  two  seasons  is  in  general  scarcely  less  regular  than  that 
of  the  wet  and  dry  seasons  between  the  tropics)  which 
caused,  and  the  desolation  Avhicli  accompanied,  the  flight 
from  Moscow."  One  can  make  no  other  comment  upon 
this  than  that  if  it  really  be  wisdom  which  statesmen  would 
do  well  to  lay  to  heart,  the  late  Dr.  Camming  must  have 
been  the  most  profound  instructor  in  statesmanship  that 
the  world  has  ever  seen.  A  prime  minister  of  real  life, 
however,  could  scarcely  be  seriously  recommended  to  shape 
his  pollc}'  upon  a  due  consideration  of  the  possible  alle- 
goric meaning  of  a  passage  in  Isaiah,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  obvious  objection  that  this  kind  of  appeal  to  Soi'tes 
Bihlicce  is  dangerously  liable  to  be  turned  against  those 
who  recommend  it.  On  the  whole,  one  must  say  of  this 
lay  sermon  that  it  justifies  the  apprehension  expressed  by 
the  author  in  its  concluding  pages.  It  docs  rather  "resem- 
ble the  overflow  of  an  earnest  mind  than  an  orderly  and 
premeditated,"  in  the  sense,  at  any  rate,  of  a  well-con- 
sidered "  composition." 

In  the  month  of  January,  1818,  Coleridge  once  more 
commenced  the  delivery  of  a  course  of  lectures  in  Lon- 
don. The  scope  of  this  series — fourteen  in  number — was, 
as  will  be  seen  from  the  subjoined  syllabus,  an  immensely 
comprehensive  one.  The  subject  of  the  first  was  "  the 
manners,  morals,  literature,  philosophy,  religion,  and  state 
of  society  in  general  in  European  Christendom,  from  tlie 
eighth  to  the  fifteenth  century ;"  and  of  the  second  "  the 


152  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

tales  and  metrical  romances  common  for  the  most  part  to 
England,  Germany,  and  the  north  of  France;  and  English 
songs  and  ballads  continued  to  the  reign  of  Charles  I."  In 
the  third  the  lecturer  proposed  to  deal  with  the  poetry  of 
Chaucer  and  Spenser,  of  Petrarch,  and  of  Ariosto,  Pulci, 
and  Boiardo.  The  fourth,  fifth,  and  sixth  were  to  be  de- 
voted to  the  dramatic  works  of  Shakespeare,  and  to  com- 
prise the  substance  of  Coleridge's  former  courses  on  the 
same  subject,  "  enlarged  and  varied  by  subsequent  study 
and  reflection."  In  the  seventh  he  was  to  treat  of  the 
other  principal  dramatists  of  the  Elizabethan  period,  Ben 
Jonson,  Massinger,  and  Beaumont  and  Fletcher;  in  the 
eighth  of  the  life  and  all  the  works  of  Cervantes;  in  the 
ninth  of  Rabelais,  Swift,  and  Sterne,  with  a  dissertation 
"  on  the  nature  and  constituents  of  genuine  humour,  and 
on  the  distinctions  of  humorous  from  the  witty,  the  fan- 
ciful, the  droll,  the  odd,  etc."  Donne,  Dante,  an<l  Milton 
formed  the  subject  of  the  tenth  ;  the  Arabian  Nights'  En- 
tertainments, and  the  romantic  use  of  the  supernatural  in 
poetry,  that  of  the  eleventh.  The  twelfth  was  to  be  on 
"talcs  of  witches  and  apparitions,  etc.,"  as  distinguished 
from  magic  and  magicians  of  Asiatic  origin;  and  tlie 
thirteenth,  "on  colour,  sound,  and  form  in  nature,  as  con- 
nected with  Poesy — the -word  'Poesy'  being  used  as  the 
generic  or  class  term  including  poetry,  music,  painting, 
statuary,  and  ideal  architecture  as  its  species,  the  reciprocal 
relations  of  poetry  and  philosophy  to  each  other,  and  of 
both  to  religion  and  the  moral  sense."  In  the  fourteenth 
and  final  lecture  Coleridge  proposed  to  discuss  "  the  cor- 
ruptions of  the  English  language  since  the  reign  of 
Queen  Anne,  in  our  style  of  writing  prose,"  and  to  for- 
mulate "a  few  easy  rules  for  the  attainment  of  a  manly, 
unaffected,  and    pure    language    in    our   genuine    mother 


IX.]  THE  LECTURES  OF  1S18.  153 

tongue,  whether  for  the  purposes  of  writing,  oratory,  or 
conversation," 

These  lectures,  says  Mr.  GiUman,  were  from  Coleridge's 
own  account  more  profitable  than  any  he  had  before  given, 
though  delivered  in  an  unfavourable  situation;  a  lecture- 
room  in  Flower  de  Luce  Court,  which,  however,  being  near 
the  Temple,  secured  to  him  the  benefit — if  benefit  it  w^ere 
— of  a  considerable  number  of  law  students  among  his 
auditors.  It  was  the  first  time  that  his  devoted  guardian 
had  ever  heard  him  in  public,  and  he  reports  the  signifi- 
cant fact  that  though  Coleridge  lectured  from  notes,  which 
he  had  carefully  made,  "  it  was  obvious  that  his  audience 
were  more  delighted  when,  putting  his  notes  aside,  he  spoke 
extempore.  .  .  ."  lie  was  brilliant,  fluent,  and  rapid ;  Ms 
words  seemed  to  flow  as  from  a  person  repeating  with 
grace  and  energy  some  delightful  poem.  If  he  sometimes 
paused,  it  was  not  for  the  want  of  words,  but  that  he  was 
seeking  their  most  appropriate  or  most  logical  arrangement. 

An  incident,  related  with  extreme,  though  in  a  great 
m.easure  unconscious,  drollery  by  Mr.  Gillman  in  connec- 
tion with  a  lecture  delivered  at  this  period  is  to  my  mind 
of  more  assistance  than  many  of  the  accounts  of  his  "lay 
sermons"  in  private  circles,  in  enabling  us  to  comprehend 
one  element  of  Coleridge's  marvellous  powers  of  discourse. 
Early  one  morning  at  Mr.  Gillman's  he  received  two  letters 
— one  to  inform  him  that  he  was  expected  that  same  even- 
ing to  deliver  a  lecture,  at  the  rooms  of  the  London  Phil- 
osophical Society,  to  an  audience  of  some  four  or  five  hun- 
dred persons;  the  other  containing  a  list  of  the  previous 
lecturers  and  the  lectures  delivered  by  them  during  the 
course  of  the  season.  At  seven  o'clock  in  the  evening 
Coleridge  and  Mr,  Gillman  went  up  to  town  to  make  some 
inquiries  respecting  this  unexpected  application;  but,  on 


154  COLERIDGE.  [ciup. 

arriving  at  the  house  of  the  gentleman  who  had  written 
the  letter,  they  were  informed  that  he  was  not  at  home, 
but  would  return  at  eight  o'clock — the  liour  fixed  for  the 
commencement  of  the  lecture.  They  then  proceeded  to 
the  Society's  rooms,  where  in  due  time  the  audience  as- 
sembled ;  and  the  committee  having  at  last  entered  and 
taken  their  places  on  the  seats  reserved  for  them,  "  Mr. 
President  arose  fi-om  the  centre  of  the  group,  and,  putting 
on  a  'president's  hat,'  which  so  disfigured  him  that  we 
could  scarcely  refrain  from  laughter,  addressed  the  com- 
pany in  these  words :  '  This  evening  Mr.  Coleridge  will  de- 
liver a  lecture  on  "the  Growth  of  the  Individual  Mind."'" 
Coleridge  at  first  "  seemed  startled,"  as  well  he  might,  and 
turning  round  to  Mr.  Gillman  whispered:  "A  pretty  stiff 
subject  they  have  chosen  for  me."  However,  he  instantly 
mounted  his  standing-place  and  began  without  hesitation, 
previously  requesting  his  friend  to  observe  the  effect  of 
his  lecture  on  the  audience.  It  was  agreed  that,  should 
he  appear  to  fail,  Gillman  was  to  "  clasp  his  ancle ;  but 
that  he  was  to  continue  for  an  hour  if  the  countenances 
of  his  auditors  indicated  satisfaction."  Coleridge  then 
began  his  address  in  these  words :  "  The  lecture  I  am 
about  to  give  this  evening  is  purely  extempore.  Should 
you  find  a  nominative  case  looking  out  for  a  verb,  or  a 
fatherless  verb  for  a  nominative  case,  you  must  excuse  it. 
It  is  purely  extempore,  tliough  I  have  read  and  thought 
much  on  the  subject."  At  this  the  company  smiled,  which 
seemed  to  inspire  the  lecturer  with  confidence.  He  plunged 
at  once  into  his  lecture — and  most  brilliant,  eloquent,  and 
logically  consecutive  it  was.  The  time  moved  on  so  swiftly 
that  Mr.  Gillman  found,  on  looking  at  his  watch,  that  an 
hour  and  a  half  had  passed  away,  and,  therefore,  he  con- 
tinues "  waiting  only  a  desirable  moment — to  use  his  own 


IX.]  AS  SHAKESPEARIAN  CRITIC.  155 

playful  words — I  prepared  myself  to  punctuate  his  oration. 
As  previously  agreed,  I  pressed  his  ancle,  and  thus  gave 
bim  the  hint  he  had  requested ;  when,  bowing  graciously, 
and  with  a  benevolent  and  smiling  countenance,  be  present- 
ly descended.  The  lecture  was  quite  new  to  me,  and  I  be- 
lieve quite  new  to  himself  so  far  as  the  arrangement  of  bis 
words  was  concerned.  The  floating  thoughts  w^ere  beauti- 
fully arranged,  and  delivered  on  the  spur  of  the  moment. 
AVhat  accident  gave  rise  to  the  singular  request  that  he 
should  deliver  this  lecture  impromptu,  I  never  learnt;  nor 
did  it  signify,  as  it  afforded  a  happy  opportunity  to  many 
of  witnessing  in  part  the  extent  of  his  reading  and  the 
extraordinary  strength  of  bis  powers." 

It  is  tantalising  to  think  that  no  record  of  this  remark- 
able performance  remains ;  but,  indeed,  the  same  may  to 
some  extent  be  said,  and  in  various  degrees,  of  nearly  all 
the  lectures  which  Coleridge  ever  delivered.  With  the 
exception  of  seven  out  of  the  fifteen  of  1811,  which  were 
published  in  185G  by  Mr.  Payne  Collier  from  short-hand 
notes  taken  at  the  time,  Coleridge's  lectures  scarcely  exist 
for  us  otherwise  than  in  the  form  of  rough  preparatory 
notes.  A  few  longer  pieces,  such  as  the  admirable  ob- 
servations in  the  second  volume  of  the  Literary  Remains, 
on  poetry,  on  the  Greek  drama,  and  on  the  progress  of 
the  dramatic  art  in  England,  are,  with  the  exception  above 
noticed,  almost  the  only  general  disquisitions  on  these  sub- 
jects Avhich  appear  to  have  reached  us  in  a  complete  state. 
Of  the  remaining  contents  of  the  volume,  including  the 
detailed  criticisms  —  now  textual,  now  analytic  —  of  the 
various  plays  of  Shakespeare,  a  considerable  portion  is 
frankly  fragmentary,  pretending,  indeed,  to  no  other  char- 
acter than  that  of  mere  marginalia.  This,  however,  does 
not  destroy — I  had  almost  said  it  docs  not  even  impair — 


156  COLEKIDGE.  [cuap. 

their  value.  It  docs  but  render  them  all  the  more  typical 
productions  of  a  -writer  whose  greatest  services  to  mankind 
in  almost  every  department  of  human  thought  and  knowl- 
edge with  which  he  concerned  himself  were  much  the  most 
often  performed  in  the  least  methodical  way.  In  read- 
ing through  these  incomparable  notes  on  Shakespeare  wo 
soon  cease  to  lament,  or  even  to  remember,  their  uncon- 
nected form  and  often  somewhat  desultory  appearance ; 
if,  indeed,  we  do  not  see  reason  to  congratulate  ourselves 
that  the  annotator,  unfettered  by  the  restraints  which 
the  composition  of  a  systematic  treatise  would  have  im- 
posed upon  him,  is  free  to  range  with  us  at  will  over 
many  a  flower-strewn  field,  for  which  otherwise  he  could 
not  perhaps  have  afforded  to  quit  the  main  road  of  his 
subject.  And  this  liberty  is  the  more  welcome,  because 
Coleridge,  primus  inter  p)cires  as  a  critic  of  any  order  of 
literature,  is  in  the  domain  of  Shakespearian  commentary 
absolute  king.  The  principles  of  analysis  which  he  was 
charged  with  having  borrowed  without  acknowledgment 
from  Schlegel,  with  whose  Shakespearian  theories  he  was 
at  the  time  entirely  unacquainted,  were  in  fact  of  his  own 
excogitation.  He  owed  nothing  in  this  matter  to  any 
individual  German,  nor  had  he  anything  in  common  with 
German  Shakespearianism  except  its  profoundly  philoso- 
phising spirit,  which,  moreover,  was  in  his  case  directed 
and  restrained  by  other  qualities,  too  often  wanting  in 
critics  of  that  industrious  race ;  for  he  possessed  a  sense 
of  the  ridiculous,  a  feeling  for  the  poetic,  a  tact,  a  taste, 
and  a  judgment,  which  would  have  saved  many  a  worthy 
but  heavy-handed  Teutonic  professor,  who  should  have 
been  lucky  enough  to  own  these  gifts,  from  exposing 
himself  and  his  science  to  the  satire  of  the  light-minded. 
Very  rarely,  indeed,  do  we  find  Coleridge  indulging  plus 


IX.]  AS  SHAKESPEARIAN  CPvITIC.  157 

ccquo  his  passion  for  psychological  analysis.  Deeply  as 
his  criticism  penetrates,  it  is  yet  loyally  recognitive  of  the 
opacity  of  rnile-stones.  Far  as  he  sees  into  his  subject,  wc 
never  find  him  fancying  that  he  sees  beyond  the  point  at 
which  the  faculty  of  human  vision  is  exhausted.  His 
conception  of  the  more  complex  of  Shakespeare's  per- 
sonages, his  theory  of  their  characters,  his  reading  of  their 
motives,  is  often  subtle,  but  always  sane;  his  interpreta- 
tion of  the  master's  own  dealings  with  them,  and  of  the 
language  which  he  puts  into  their  mouths,  is  often  high- 
ly imaginative,  but  it  is  rarely  fanciful.  Take,  as  an  illus- 
tration of  the  first -mentioned  merit,  the  following  acute 
but  eminently  sensible  estimate  of  the  character  of  Po- 
lonius : 

"  He  is  the  personified  memory  of  wisdom  no  longer  actually  pos- 
sessed. This  admirable  character  is  always  misrepresented  on  the 
stage.  Shakspeare  never  intended  to  exhibit  him  as  a  buffoon  ;  for 
although  it  was  natural  that  Hamlet — a  young  man  of  fire  and  genius, 
detesting  formality  and  disliking  Polonius  on  political  grounds,  as 
imagining  that  he  had  assisted  his  uncle  in  his  usurpation — should 
express  himself  satirically,  yet  this  must  not  be  taken  exactly  as  the 
poet's  conception  of  him.  In  Polonius  a  certain  induration  of  char- 
acter had  arisen  from  long  habits  of  business ;  but  take  his  advice 
to  Laertes,  and  Ophelia's  reverence  for  his  memory,  and  wc  shall  see 
that  he  was  meant  to  be  represented  as  a  statesman  somewhat  past 
his  faculties — his  recollections  of  life  all  full  of  wisdom,  and  show- 
ing a  knowledge  of  human  nature,  while  what  immediately  takes 
place  before  him  and  escapes  from  him  is  indicative  of  weakness." 

Or  this  comment  on  the  somewhat  faint  individualisation 
of  the  figure  of  Lear : 

"  In  Lear  old  age  is  itself  a  character — natural  imperfections  be- 
ing increased  by  life-long  habits  of  receiving  a  prompt  obedience. 
Any  addition  of  individualisation  would  have  been  unnecessary  and 


158  COLERIDGE.  [ciiai-, 

painful;  for  the  relation  of  others  to  him,  of  wondrous  fidelity  and 
of  frightful  ingratitude,  alone  sufficiently  distinguish  him.  Thus 
Lear  becomes  the  open  and  ample  playroom  of  nature's  passions." 

Oi'  lastly,  in  illustration  of  raj^  second  point,  let  us  take 
this  note  on  the  remark  of  tlie  knight  tiiat  "since  my 
young  lady's  going  into  France  the  fool  hath  much  pined 
away :" 

*'  The  fool  is  no  comic  buffoon  to  make  the  groundlings  laugh — 
no  forced  condescension  of  Shakspeare's  genius  to  the  taste  of  his 
audience.  Accordingly  the  poet  prepares  us  for  the  introduction, 
which  he  never  does  with  any  of  his  common  clowns  and  fools,  by 
bringing  him  into  living  connection  with  the  pathos  of  the  play.  He 
is  as  wonderful  a  creation  as  Caliban — his  wild  babblings  and  in- 
spired idiocy  articulate  and  gauge  the  horroi-s  of  the  scene." 

The  subject  is  a  tempting  one  to  linger  over,  did  not 
imperative  exigencies  of  space  compel  me  to  pass  on  from 
it.  There  is  much — very  much — more  critical  matter  in 
the  Literary  Remains  of  which  it  is  hard  to  forbear  quo- 
tation ;  and  I  may  mention  in  particular  the  profoundly 
suggestive  remarks  on  the  nature  of  the  humorous,  with 
their  accompanying  analysis  of  the  genius  and  artistic 
method  of  Sterne.  But  it  is,  as  has  been  said,  in  Shake- 
spearian criticism  that  Coleridge's  unique  mastery  of  all 
the  tools  of  the  critic  is  most  conspicuous,  and  it  is  in  the 
brilliant,  if  unmethodised,  pages  which  I  have  been  dis- 
cussing that  we  may  most  readily  find  consolation  for  the 
too  early  silencing  of  his  muse.  For  these  consummate 
criticisms  are  essentially  and  above  all  the  criticisms  of  a 
poet.  They  are  such  as  conld  not  have  been  achieved  by 
any  man  not  originally  endowed  with  that  divine  gift 
which  was  fated  in  this  instance  to  expend  itself  within 
so  few  years.      Nothing,  indeed,  could   more    strikingly 


IX.]  AS  SHAKESPEARIAN  CRITIC.  159 

illustrate  tlic  commanding  advantage  possessed  by  a  poet 
interpreting  a  poet  than  is  to  be  found  in  Coleridge's 
occasional  sarcastic  comments  on  the  banalites  of  our  na- 
tional poet's  most  prosaic  commentator,  Warburton — the 
"  thought-swarming  but  idealess  Warburton,"  as  he  once 
felicitously  styles  him.  The  one  man  seems  to  read  his 
author's  text  under  the  clear,  diffused,  unwavering  radi- 
ance emitted  from  his  own  poetic  imagination  ;  while  the 
criticism  of  the  other  resembles  a  perpetual  scratching  of 
damp  matches,  which  flash  a  momentary  light  into  one 
corner  of  the  dark  passage,  and  then  go  out. 
8 


CHAPTER  X. 

CLOSING  TEARS.  — TEMPOKARY  RENEWAL  OF  MONEY  TROU- 
BLES.— THE  "AIDS  TO  REFLECTION." — GROWING  WEAKNESS. 
— VISIT  TO  GERMANY  WITH  THE  WORDSWORTHS. — LAST  ILL- 
NESS AND  DEATH. 

[1818-1834.] 

For  the  years  which  now  remained  to  Coleridge,  some  six- 
teen in  number,  dating  from  his  last  appearance  as  a  pub- 
lic lecturer,  his  life  would  seem  to  have  been  attended  with 
something,  at  least,  of  that  sort  of  happiness  which  is  en- 
joyed by  the  nation  of  uneventful  annals.  There  is  little 
to  be  told  of  him  in  the  way  of  literary  performance ;  lit- 
tle record  remains,  unfortunately,  of  the  discursively  didac- 
tic talk  in  which,  during  these  years,  his  intellectual  activ- 
ity found  its  busiest  exercise ;  of  incident,  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  the  word,  there  is  almost  none.  An  account  of 
these  closing  days  of  his  life  must  resolve  itself  almost 
wholly  into  a  "  history  of  opinion  " — an  attempt  to  reani- 
mate for  ourselves  that  life  of  perpetual  meditation  which 
Coleridge  lived,  and  to  trace,  so  far  as  the  scanty  evidence 
of  his  utterances  enables  us  to  do  so,  the  general  tenor  of 
his  daily  thoughts.  From  one  point  of  view,  of  course, 
this  task  would  be  extremely  difficult,  if  not  impossible; 
from  another  comparatively  easy.  It  is  easy,  that  is  to  say, 
to  investigate  Coleridge's  speculations,  so  far  as  their  sub- 
ject is  concerned,  whatever  difficulties  their  obscurity  and 


CHAP.  X.]  CLOSING  YEARS.  161 

subtlety  may  present  to  the  inquirer;  for,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  their  subject  is  remarkably  uniform.  Attempts  to  di- 
vide tlie  literary  life  of  a  writer  into  eras  are  more  often 
arbitrary  and  fanciful  than  not;  but  the  peculiar  circum- 
stances of  Coleridge's  career  did  in  fact  effect  the  division 
for  themselves.  His  life  until  the  age  of  twenty-six  may 
fairly  be  described  as  in  its  "  poetic  period."  It  was  dur- 
ing these  years,  and  indeed  during  the  last  two  or  three  of 
them,  that  he  produced  all  the  poetry  by  which  he  will  be 
remembered,  while  he  produced  little  else  of  mark  or  mem- 
orability. The  twenty  years  which  follow  from  1*798  to 
1818  may  with  equal  accuracy  be  styled  the  "critical  pe- 
riod." It  was  during  these  years  that  he  did  his  best  work 
as  a  journalist,  and  all  his  work  as  a  public  lecturer  on 
aesthetics.  It  was  during  them  that  he  said  his  say,  and 
even  his  final  say,  so  far  as  any  public  modes  of  expression 
were  concerned,  on  politics  and  on  art.  From  1818  to  his 
death  his  life  was  devoted  entirely  to  metaphysics  and  the- 
ology, and  with  such  close  and  constant  reference  to  the 
latter  subject,  to  which  indeed  his  metaphysics  had  through- 
out his  life  been  ancillary,  that  it  deserves  to  give  the  name 
of  the  "  theological  period  "  to  these  closing  years. 

Their  lack  of  incident,  however,  is  not  entirely  as  favour- 
able a  circumstance  as  that  uneventfulness  of  national  an- 
nals to  which  I  have  compared  it ;  for,  though  "  no  news 
may  be  good  news  "  in  the  case  of  a  nation's  history,  it  is 
by  no  means  as  certainly  so  in  the  case  of  a  man's  biogra- 
phy, and,  least  of  all,  when  the  subject  is  a  man  whose  in- 
ward life  of  thought  and  feeling  so  completely  overshad- 
owed his  outward  life  of  action  throughout  his  whole  ca- 
reer. There  is  indeed  evidence,  slight  in  amount,  but  con- 
clusive in  character — plain  and  painful  evidence  enough  to 
show  that  at  least  the  first  four  or  five  years  of  the  period 


162  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

we  have  mentioned  were  not  altogether  years  of  resigna- 
tion and  calm;  that  they  were  embittered  by  recurring 
agonies  of  self-reproach,  by 

"Sense  of  past  youth,  and  manhood  come  in  vain, 
And  genius  given,  and  knowledge  won  in  vain ;" 

and  by  the  desolating  thought  that  all  which  had  been 
"  culled  in  wood-walks  wild,"  and  "  all  which  patient  toil 

had  reared,"  were  to  be 

— "  but  flowers 

Strewn  on  the  corse,  and  borne  upon  the  bier, 
In  the  same  coffin,  for  the  self-same  grave !" 

Here  and  there  in  the  correspondence  with  Thomas  All- 
sop  we  obtain  a  glimpse  into  that  vast  half-darkened  arena 
in  which  this  captive  spirit  self-condemned  to  the  lions 
was  struirfflinQr  its  last.  To  one  strange  and  hitherto  un- 
explained  letter  I  have  already  referred.  It  was  written 
from  Ramsgate  in  the  autumn  of  1822,  evidently  under 
circumstances  of  deep  depression.  But  there  is  a  letter 
nearly  two  years  earlier  in  date  addressed  to  the  same  cor- 
respondent which  contains  by  far  the  fullest  account  of 
Coleridge's  then  condition  of  mind,  the  state  of  his  liter- 
ary engagements  and  his  literary  projects,  his  completed 
and  uncompleted  work.  As  usual  with  him  it  is  stress  of 
money  matters  that  prompts  him  to  write,  and  he  prefaces 
his  request  for  assistance  with  the  following  portentous 
catalogue  of  realised  or  contemplated  schemes.  "  Contem- 
plated," indeed,  is  too  modest  a  word,  according  to  his  own 
account,  to  be  applied  to  any  one  item  in  the  formidable 
list.  Of  all  of  them,  he  has,  he  tells  Allsop,  "  already  the 
written  materials  and  contents,  requiring  only  to  be  put  to- 
gether from  the  loose  papers  and  commonplace  in  memo- 
randum books,  and  needing  no  other  change,  whether  of 


xj  CLOSING  YEARS.  163 

omission,  addition,  or  correction,  than  the  mere  act  of  ar- 
ranging, and  the  opportunity  of  seeing  the  whole  collec- 
tively, bring  with  them  of  course."  Heads  I.  and  IL  of 
the  list  comprise  those  criticisms  on  Shakespeare  and  the 
other  principal  Elizabethan  dramatists ;  on  Dante,  Spenser, 
Milton,  Cervantes,  Calderon ;  on  Chaucer,  Ariosto,  Donne, 
Rabelais,  etc.,  which  formed  the  staple  of  the  course  of 
lectures  delivered  in  1818,  and  which  were  published  after 
his  death  in  the  first  two  of  the  four  volumes  of  Literary 
Remains  brought  out  under  the  editorship  of  Mr.  H.  N. 
Coleridge.  Reserving  No.  III.  for  a  moment  we  find  No. 
IV.  to  consist  of  "  Letters  on  the  Old  and  New  Testament, 
and  on  the  Doctrines  and  Principles  held  in  common  by 
the  Fathers  and  Founders  of  the  Reformation,  addressed 
to  a  Candidate  for  Holy  Orders,  including  advice  on  the 
plan  and  subjects  of  preaching  proper  to  a  minister  of 
the  Established  Church."  The  letters  never  apparently 
saw  the  light  of  publicity,  at  any  rate,  in  the  epistolary 
form,  either  during  the  author's  lifetime  or  after  his 
death ;  and  with  regard  to  II.  and  III.,  which  did  obtain 
posthumous  publication,  the  following  caution  should  be 
borne  in  mind  by  the  reader.  "  To  the  completion,"  says 
Coleridge,  "of  these  four  works  I  have  literally  nothing 
more  to  do  than  to  transcribe ;  but,  as  I  before  hinted, 
from  so  many  scraps  and  Sibylline  leaves,  including 
margins  of  blank  pages,  that  unfortunately  I  must  be  my 
own  scribe,  and,  not  done  by  myself,  they  will  be  all  but 
lost."  As  matters  turned  out  he  was  not  his  own  scribe, 
and  the  difficulty  which  Mr.  Nelson  Coleridge  experienced 
in  piecing  together  the  fragmentary  materials  at  his  dispos- 
al is  feelingly  described  by  him  in  his  preface  to  the  first 
edition.  He  added  that  the  contents  of  these  volumes 
were  drawn  from  a  portion  only  of  the  MSS,  entrusted  to 


1G4  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

liim,  and  that  the  remainder  of  tlie  collection,  which,  Under 
favourable  circumstances,  he  hoped  might  hereafter  see  the 
light,  "  was  at  least  of  equal  value"  with  what  he  was  then 
presenting  to  the  reader.  This  hope  was  never  realised ; 
and  it  must  be  remembered,  therefore,  that  the  published 
I'ccord  of  Coleridge's  achievements  as  a  critic  is,  as  has  al- 
ready been  pointed  out,  extremely  imperfect.'  That  it  is 
not  even  more  disappointingly  so  than  it  is,  may  well  entitle 
his  nephew  and  editor  to  the  gratitude  of  posterity ;  but 
where  much  has  been  done,  there  yet  remains  much  to  do 
ei'e  Coleridge's  consummate  analyses  of  poetic  and  dramatic 
works  can  be  presented  to  the  reader  in  other  than  their 
present  shape  of  a  series  of  detached  brilliancies.  The 
pearls  are  there,  but  the  string  is  wanting.  Whether  it 
will  be  ever  supplied,  or  whether  it  is  possible  now  to 
supply  it,  one  cannot  say. 

The  third  of  Coleridge's  virtually  completed  works — 
there  is  much  virtue  in  a  "  virtually  " — was  a  "  History  of 
Philosophy  considered  as  a  Tendency  of  the  Human  Mind 
to  exhibit  the  Powers  of  the  Human  Reason,  to  discover 
by  its  own  strength  the  Origin  and  Laws  of  Man  and  the 
World,  from  Pythagoras  to  Locke  and  Condillac."  This 
production,  however,  considerable  as  it  is,  was  probably 
merely  ancillary  to  what  he  calls  "  My  Great  Work,  to 
the  preparation  of  which  more  than  twenty  years  of  my 
life  have  been  devoted,  and  on  which  my  hopes  of  exten- 
sive and  permanent  utility,  of  fame  in  the  noblest  sense  of 
the  word,  mainly  rest."     To  this  work  he  goes  on  to  say  : 


^  How  imperfect,  a  comparison  between  estimated  and  actual  bulk 
will  show.  No.  I.  was,  according  to  Coleridge's  reckoning,  to  form 
three  volumes  of  500  pages  each.  In  the  Literary  Remains  it  fills 
less  than  half  of  four  volumes  of  little  more  than  400  pages  caclL 


X.]  CLOSING  YEARS.  165 

"  All  my  other  writings,  unless  I  except  my  Poems  (and  these  I  can 
exclude  in  part  only),  arc  introductory  and  preparative,  while  its  re- 
sult, if  the  premises  be  as  I  with  the  most  tranquil  assurance  am 
convinced  they  are — incontrovertible,  the  deductions  legitimate,  and 
the  conclusions  commensurate,  and  only  commensurate  with  both 
[must  be],  to  effect  a  revolution  in  all  that  has  been  called  Philoso- 
phy and  Metaphysics  in  England  and  France  since  the  era  of  com- 
mencing predominance  of  the  mechanical  system  at  the  Restoration 
of  our  Second  Charles,  and  with  [in]  the  present  fashionable  views 
not  only  of  religion,  morals,  and  politics,  but  even  of  the  modern 
physics  and  physiology." 

TLis,  it  must  be  allowed,  is  a  suflBciently  "  large  order," 
being  apparently  indeed  nothing  less  than  an  undertaking 
to  demolisli  the  system  of  Locke  and  bis  successors,  and  to 
erect  German  Transcendentalism  on  the  ruins.  With  any- 
thing less  than  this,  however — with  any  less  noble  object 
or  less  faith  in  their  attainments — Coleridge  could  not,  he 
declares,  have  stood  acquitted  of  folly  and  abuse  of  time, 
talent,  and  learning,  on  a  labour  of  three-fourths  of  his 
intellectual  life.  Somewhat  more  than  a  volume  of  this 
magnum  opus  had  been  dictated  by  him  to  his  "friend 
and  enlightened  pupil,  Mr.  Green,  so  as  to  exist  fit  for  the 
press ;"  and  more  than  as  much  again  had  been  done,  but 
he  had  been  compelled  to  break  off  the  weekly  meetings 
with  his  pupil  from  the  necessity  of  writing  on  subjects  of 
the  passing  day.  Then  comes  a  reference,  the  last  we  meet 
with,  to  the  real  "  great  work,"  as  the  unphilosophic  world 
has  always  considered  and  will  always  consider  it.  On 
this  subject  he  says : 

"  Of  my  poetic  works  I  would  fain  finish  the  Chrisiabel.  Alas ! 
for  the  proud  time  when  I  planned,  when  I  had  present  to  my  mind 
the  materials  as  well  as  the  scheme  of  the  Hymns  entitled  Spirit, 
Sun,  Earth,  Air,  Water,  Fire,  and  Man  ;  and  the  Epic  Poem  on  what 
appears  to  me  the  only  fit  subject  remaining  for  an  Epic  Poem — 
Jerusalem  besieged  and  destroyed  by  Titus." 


166  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

And  then  there  follows  this  most  pathetic  passage,  neces- 
sary, in  spite  of  its  length,  to  be  transcribed  entire,  both  on 
account  of  the  value  of  its  biographic  details — its  informa- 
tion on  the  subject  of  the  useless  worldly  afFaii-s,  etc. — and 
because  of  the  singularly  penetrating  light  which  it  throws 
upon  the  mental  and  moral  nature  of  the  man : 

"  I  have  only  by  fits  and  starts  ever  prayed — I  have  not  prevailed 
upon  myself  to  pray  to  God  in  sincerity  and  entireness  for  the  forti- 
tude that  might  enable  me  to  resign  myself  to  the  abandonment  of 
all  my  life's  best  hopes,  to  say  boldly  to  myself,  'Gifted  with  powers 
confessedly  above  mediocrity,  aided  by  an  education  of  which  no  less 
from  almost  unexampled  hardships  and  sufferings  than  from  mani- 
fold and  peculiar  advantages  I  have  never  yet  found  a  parallel,  I 
have  devoted  myself  to  a  life  of  unintermitted  reading,  thinking, 
meditating,  and  observing  ;  I  have  not  only  sacrificed  all  worldly  pros- 
pects of  wealth  and  advancement,  but  have  in  my  inmost  soul  stood 
aloof  from  temporary  reputation.  In  consequence  of  these  toils  and 
this  self-dedifai,ion  I  possess  a  calm  and  clear  consciousness  that  in 
many  and  most  impoitant  departments  of  truth  and  beauty  I  have 
outstrode  my  contemporaries,  those  at  least  of  highest  name,  that  the 
number  of  my  printed  works  bear  witness  that  I  have  not  been  idle, 
and  the  seldom  acknowledged  but  strictly  proveahle  effects  of  my 
labours  appropriated  to  the  welfare  of  my  age  in  the  Morning  Post 
before  the  peace  of  Amiens,  in  the  Courier  afterwards,  and  in  the 
serious  and  various  subjects  of  my  lectures  .  .  .  (add  to  which  the 
unlimited  freedom  of  my  communications  to  colloquial  life)  may 
surely  be  allowed  as  evidence  that  I  have  not  been  useless  to  my 
generation.  But,  from  circumstances,  the  main  portion  of  my  har- 
vest is  still  on  the  ground,  ripe  indeed  and  only  waiting,  a  few  for  the 
sickle,  but  a  large  part  only  for  the  sheaving  and  carting  and  housing 
— but  from  all  this  I  must  turn  away  and  let  them  rot  as  they  lie, 
and  be  as  though  they  never  had  been ;  for  I  must  go  and  gather 
blackberries  and  earth-nuts,  or  pick  mushrooms  and  gild  oak-apples 
for  the  palate  and  fancies  of  chance  customers.  I  must  abrogate  the 
name  of  philosopher  and  poet,  and  scribble  as  fast  as  I  can  and  with 
as  little  thought  as  I  can  for  Blackwood's  Magazine,  or  as  I  have  been 
employed  for  the  last  days  in  writing  MS.  sermons  for  Lizy  t'lergy> 


X.J        RENEWAL  OF  MONEY  TROUBLES.        167 

men  who  stipulate  that  the  composition  must  be  more  than  respecta- 
ble.' .  .  .  This "  [i.e.,  to  say  this  to  myself]  "  I  have  not  yet  had 
courage  to  do.  My  soul  sickens  and  my  heart  sinks,  and  thus  oscil- 
lating between  both  "  [forms  of  activit}' — the  production  of  perma- 
nent and  of  ephemeral  work]  "  I  do  neither — neither  as  it  ought  to 
be  done  to  any  profitable  end." 

And  his  proposal  for  extricating  himself  from  this  dis- 
tressing position  is  that  "  those  who  think  respectfully  and 
hope  highly  of  my  power  and  attainments  should  guaran- 
tee me  a  yearly  sum  for  three  or  four  years,  adequate  to  my 
actual  support,  with  such  comforts  and  decencies  of  ap- 
pearance as  my  health  and  habit  have  made  necessaries, 
so  that  my  mind  may  be  unanxious  as  far  as  the  present 
time  is  concerned."  Thus  provided  for  he  would  under- 
take to  devote  two-thirds  of  his  time  to  some  one  work 
of  those  above  mentioned — that  is  to  say,  of  the  first  four 
— and  confine  it  e.xclusively  to  it  till  finished,  while  the 
remaining  third  of  his  time  he  would  go  on  maturing  and 
completing  his  "great  work,"  and  "(for,  if  but  easy  in 
my  mind,  I  have  no  doubt  either  of  the  reawakening 
power  or  of  the  kindling  inclination)  my  Christahel,  and 
what  else  the  happier  hour  may  inspire."  Mr.  Green,  he 
goes  on  to  say,  had  promised  to  contribute  £30  to  £40 
yearly,  another  pupil,  "  the  son  of  one  of  my  dearest  old 
friends,  £50,"  and  £10  or  £20  could,  he  thought,  he  re- 
lied on  from  another.  The  whole  amount  of  the  required 
annuity  would  be  about  £200,  to  be  repaid,  of  course, 
should  disposal  or  sale  of  his  works  produce,  or  as  far  as 
they  should  produce,  the  means.  But  "  am  I  entitled," 
he  asks  uneasilj',  "  have  I  a  right  to  do  this  ?  Can  I  do  it 
without  moral  degradation  ?  And  lastly,  can  it  be  done 
without  loss  of  character  in  the  eyes  of  my  acquaintances 
and  of  my  friends'  acquaintances?" 


168  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

I  cannot  take  upon  myself  to  answer  these  painful  ques- 
tions. The  reply  to  be  given  to  theui  must  depend  upon 
the  judgment  which  each  individual  student  of  this  re- 
markable but  unhappy  career  may  pass  upon  it  as  a  whole  ; 
and,  while  it  would  be  too  much  to  expect  that  that  judg- 
ment should  be  entirely  favourable,  one  may  at  least  be- 
lieve that  a  fair  allowance  for  those  inveterate  weaknesses 
of  physical  constitution  which  so  largely  aggravated,  if 
they  did  not  wholly  generate,  the  fatal  infirmities  of  Cole- 
ridge's moral  nature,  must  materially  mitigate  the  harsh- 
ness of  its  terms. 

The  story  of  Coleridge's  closing  years  is  soon  told.  It 
is  mainly  a  record  of  days  spent  in  meditation  and  dis- 
course, in  which  character  it  will  be  treated  of  more  fully 
in  a  subsequent  chapter.  His  literary  productions  during 
the  last  fourteen  years  of  his  life  were  few  in  number,  and 
but  one  of  them  of  any  great  importance.  In  1821  he 
had  offered  himself  as  an  occasional  contributor  to  Black- 
ivood^s  Magazine,  but  a  series  of  papers  promised  by  him 
to  that  periodical  were  uncompleted,  and  his  only  two 
contributions,  in  October,  1821,  and  January,  1822,  are  of 
no  particular  note.  In  May,  1825,  he  read  a  paper  on  the 
Prometheus  of  ^schylus  before  the  Royal  Society  of  Liter- 
ature; but  "the  series  of  disquisitions  respecting  the  Egyp- 
tian in  connection  with  the  sacerdotal  theology  and  in  con- 
trast with  the  mysteries  of  ancient  Greece,"  to  which  this 
essay  had  been  announced  as  preparatory,  never  made  their 
appearance.  In  the  same  year,  however,  he  published  one 
of  the  best  known  of  his  prose  works,  his  Aids  to  Reflection. 

Of  the  success  of  this  latest  of  Coleridge's  more  impor- 
tant contributions  to  literature  there  can  be  no  doubt. 
New  editions  of  it  seem  to  have  been  demanded  at  regular 
'•itervals  for  some  twenty  years  after  its  first  production. 


X.]  THE  "AIDS  TO  REFLECTION."  1G9 

and  it  appears  to  have  had  during  the  same  period  a  rela- 
tively equal  reissue  in  the  United  States.  The  Rev.  Dr. 
James  Marsh,  an  American  divine  of  some  ability  and 
reputation,  composed  a  preliminary  essay  (now  prefixed  to 
the  fifth  English  edition),  in  which  he  elaborately  set  forth 
the  peculiar  merits  of  tlic  work,  and  undertook  to  initiate 
the  reader  in  the  fittest  and  most  profitable  method  of 
making  use  of  it.  In  these  remarks  the  reverend  essayist 
insists  more  strongly  on  the  spiritually  edifying  quality  of 
the  Aids  than  on  their  literary  merits,  and,  for  my  own 
part,  I  must  certainly  consider  him  right  in  doing  so.  As 
a  religious  manual  it  is  easy  to  understand  how  this  vol- 
ume of  Coleridge's  should  have  obtained  many  and  earnest 
readers.  What  religious  manual,  which  shows  traces  of 
spiritual  insight,  or  even  merely  of  pious  yearnings  after 
higher  and  holier  than  earthly  things,  has  ever  failed  to 
win  such  readers  among  the  weary  and  heavy-laden  of  the 
world  ?  And  that  Coleridge,  a  writer  of  the  most  pene- 
trating glance  into  divine  mysteries,  and  writing  always 
from  a  soul  all  tremulous,  as  it  were,  with  religious  sensi- 
bility, should  have  obtained  such  readers  in  abundance  is 
not  surprising.  But  to  a  critic  and  literary  biographer  I 
cannot  think  that  his  success  in  this  respect  has  much  to 
say.  For  my  own  part,  at  any  rate,  I  find  considerable 
difficulty  in  tracing  it  to  any  distinctively  literary  origin. 
There  seems  to  me  to  be  less  charm  of  thought,  less  beau- 
ty of  style,  less  even  of  Coleridge's  seldom-failing  force 
of  effective  statement,  in  the  Aids  to  Rejlectioji  than  in 
almost  any  of  his  writings.  Even  the  volume  of  some 
dozen  short  chapters  on  the  Constitution  of  the  Church 
and  State,  published  in  1830,  as  an  "aid  towards  a  right 
judgment  in  the  late  Catholic  Relief  Bill,"  appears  to  mo 
to  yield  a  more  characteristic  flavour  of  the  author's  style, 


lYO  COLERIDGE.  [chap 

and  to  exhibit  far  more  of  his  distinction  of  literary  work- 
manship, than  the  earlier  and  more  celebrated  work. 

Among  the  acquaintances  made  by  Coleridge  after  his 
retirement  to  Mr.  Gillman's  was  one  destined  to  be  of 
some  importance  to  the  history  of  his  philosophical  work. 
It  was  that  of  a  gentleman  whose  name  has  already  been 
mentioned  in  this  chapter,  Mr.  Joseph  Henry  Green,  after- 
wards a  distinguished  surgeon  and  Fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society,  who  in  his  early  years  had  developed  a  strong 
taste  for  metaphysical  speculation,  going  even  so  far  as 
to  devote  one  of  his  hard-earned  periods  of  professional 
holiday  to  a  visit  to  Germany  for  the  sake  of  studying 
philosophy  in  that  home  of  abstract  thought.  To  him 
Coleridge  was  introduced  by  his  old  Roman  acquaintance, 
Ludwig  Tieck,  on  one  of  the  latter's  visits  to  England,  and 
he  became,  as  the  extract  above  quoted  from  Coleridge's 
correspondence  shows,  his  enthusiastic  disciple  and  inde- 
fatigable fellow-worker.  In  the  pursuit  of  their  common 
studies,  and  in  those  weekly  reunions  of  admiring  friends 
which  Coleridge,  while  his  health  permitted  it,  was  in  the 
habit  of  holding,  we  may  believe  that  a  considerable  por- 
tion of  these  closing  years  of  his  life  was  passed  under 
happier  conditions  than  he  had  been  long  accustomed  to. 
It  is  pleasant  to  read  of  him  among  his  birds  and  flowers, 
and  sorrounded  by  the  ever-watchful  tendance  of  the  af- 
fectionate Gillmans,  tranquil  in  mind  at  any  rate,  if  not 
at  ease  from  his  bodily  ailments,  and  enjoying,  as  far  as 
enjoyment  was  possible  to  him,  the  peaceful  close  of  a 
stormy  and  unsettled  day.  For  the  years  1825-30,  more- 
over, his  pecuniary  circumstances  were  improved  to  the  ex- 
tent of  £105  per  annum,  obtained  for  him  at  the  instance 
of  the  Royal  Society  of  Literature,  and  held  by  him  till 
the  death  of  George  IV. 


X.]  VISIT  TO  GERMANY.  Ill 

Two  incidents  of  his  later  years  are,  however,  worthy 
of  more  special  mention  —  a  tour  up  the  Rhine,  which 
he  took  in  1828,  in  company  with  Wordsworth  and  his 
daughter,  and,  some  years  earlier,  a  meeting  with  John 
Keats.  "  A  loose,  slack,  not  well  dressed  youth,"  it  is 
recorded  in  the  Tahle  Talk,  published  after  his  death  by 

his  nephew,  "met  Mr. "  [it  was  Mr.  Green,  of  whom 

more  hereafter]  "  and  myself  in  a  lane  near  Highgate. 
Green  knew  him  and  spoke.  It  was  Keats.  He  was  in- 
troduced to  me,  and  stayed  a  miiuite  ov  so.  After  he 
had  left  us  a  little  way,  he  came  back  and  said,  '  Let  me 
carry  away  the  memory,  Coleridge,  of  having  pressed  your 
hand.'  'There  is  death  in  that  hand,'  I  said  to  Green, 
when  Keats  was  gone ;  yet  this  was,  I  believe,  before  the 
consumption  showed  itself  distinctly." 

His  own  health,  however,  had  been  steadily  declining  in 
these  latter  years,  and  the  German  tour  with  the  Words- 
worths  must,  I  should  imagine,  have  been  the  last  expedi- 
tion involving  any  considerable  exercise  of  the  physical 
powers  which  he  was  able  to  take.  Within  a  year  or  so 
afterwards  his  condition  seems  to  have  grown  sensibly 
worse.  In  November,  1831,  he  writes  that  for  eighteen 
months  past  his  life  had  been  "  one  chain  of  severe  sick- 
nesses, brief  and  imperfect  convalescences,  and  capricious 
relapses."  Henceforth  he  was  almost  entirely  confined  to 
the  sick-room.  His  faculties,  however,  still  remained  clear 
and  unclouded.  The  entries  in  the  Table  Talk  do  not 
materially  diminish  in  frequency.  Their  tone  of  colloquy 
undergoes  no  perceptible  variation  ;  they  continue  to  be  as 
stimulating  and  delightful  reading  as  ever.  Not  till  11th 
July,  1834,  do  we  find  any  change;  but  here  at  last  we 
meet  the  shadow,  deemed  longer  than  it  was  in  reality,  of 
the  approaching  end.     "  I  am  dying,"  said  Coleridge,  "but 


112  COLERIDGE.  [ciiai>.  x. 

without  expectation  of  a  speedy  release.  Is  it  not  straiij^e 
that,  very  recently,  by-gone  images  and  scenes  of  early  life 
have  stolen  into  my  mind  like  breezes  blown  from  the 
spice-islands  of  Youth  and  Hope — those  twin  realities  of 
the  phantom  world  !  I  do  not  add  Love,  for  what  is  Love 
but  Youth  and  Hope  embracing,  and,  so  seen,  as  one.  .  .  . 
Hooker  wished  to  live  to  finish  his  Ecclesiastical  Polity — 
so  I  own  I  wish  life  and  strength  had  been  spared  to  me 
to  complete  my  Philosophy.  For,  as  God  hears  me,  the 
originating,  continuing,  and  sustaining  wish  and  design  in 
my  heart  were  to  exalt  the  glory  of  His  name ;  and,  which  is 
the  same  thing  in  other  words,  to  promote  the  improvement 
of  mankind.  But  visum  aliter  Deo,  and  His  will  be  done." 
The  end  was  nearer  than  he  thought.  It  was  on  the 
11th  of  July,  as  has  been  said,  that  he  uttered  these  last 
words  of  gentle  and  pious  resignation.  On  that  day  fort- 
night he  died.  Midway,  however,  in  this  intervening  pe- 
riod, he  knew  that  the  "  speedy  release  "  which  he  had  not 
ventured  to  expect  was  close  at  hand.  The  death,  when  it 
came,  was  in  some  sort  emblematic  of  the  life.  Sufferings 
severe  and  constant,  till  within  thirty-six  hours  of  the  end: 
at  the  last  peace.  On  the  25th  of  July,  1834,  this  sorely- 
tried,  long -labouring,  fate-marred  and  self- marred  life 
passed  tranquilly  away.  The  pitiful  words  of  Kent  over 
his  dead  master  rise  irrepressibly  to  the  lips — 

"0  let  him  pass;  he  hates  hiin 
Who  would  upon  the  rack  of  this  tough  world 
Stretch  him  out  longer." 

There  might  have  been  something  to  be  said,  though  not 
by  Kent,  of  the  weaknesses  of  Lear  himself;  but  at  such 
a  moment  compassion  both  for  the  king  and  for  the  poet 
may  well  impose  silence  upon  censure. 


CHAPTER  XL 

COLERrOGE'S  METAPHYSICS  AND  THEOLOGY. — THE  "SPIRITUAL 
philosophy"  op  MR.  GREEN. 

In  spite  of  all  tlie  struggles,  the  resolutions,  and  the  en- 
treaties which  displayed  themselves  so  distressingly  in  the 
letter  to  Mr.  Allsop,  quoted  in  the  last  chapter,  it  is  doubt- 
ful whether  Coleridge's  "great  work"  made  much  addi- 
tional progress  during  the  last  dozen  years  of  his  life.  The 
weekly  meeting  with  Mr.  Green  seems,  according  to  the 
latter's  biographer,  to  have  been  resumed.  Mr.  Simon 
tells  us  that  he  continued  year  after  year  to  sit  at  the  feet 
of  his  Gamaliel,  getting  more  and  more  insight  into  his 
opinions,  until,  in  1834,  two  events  occurred  which  deter- 
mined the  remaining  course  of  Mr.  Green's  life.  One  of 
these  events,  it  is  needless  to  say,  was  Coleridge's  death ; 
the  other  was  the  death  of  his  disciple's  father,  with  the 
result  of  leaving  Mr.  Green  possessed  of  such  ample  means 
as  to  render  him  independent  of  his  profession.  The  lan- 
guage of  Coleridge's  will,  together,  no  doubt,  with  verbal 
communications  which  had  passed,  imposed  on  Mr.  Green 
what  he  accepted  as  an  obligation  to  devote  so  far  as  nec- 
essary the  whole  remaining  strength  and  earnestness  of  his 
life  to  the  one  task  of  systematising,  developing,  and  es- 
tablishing the  doctrines  of  the  Coleridgian  philosophy. 
Accordingly,  in  1836,  two  years  after  his  master's  death, 


IH  COLERIDGE.  [cuap. 

he  retired  from  medical  practice,  and  thenceforward,  until 
his  own  death,  nearly  thirty  years  afterwards,  he  applied 
himself  unceasingly  to  what  was  in  a  twofold  sense  a 
labour  of  love. 

We  are  not,  it  seems  from  his  biographer's  account,  to 
suppose  that  Mr.  Green's  task  was  in  any  material  degree 
lightened  for  him  by  his  previous  collaboration  with  Cole- 
ridge. The  latter  had,  as  we  have  seen,  declared  in  his 
letter  to  Allsop  that  "  more  than  a  volume  "  of  the  great 
work  had  been  dictated  by  him  to  Mr.  Green,  so  as  to  ex- 
ist in  a  condition  fit  for  the  press ;  but  this,  according  to 
Mr.  Simon,  was  not  the  case,  and  the  probability  is,  there- 
fore, that  "  more  than  a  volume  "  meant  written  material 
equal  in  amount  to  more  than  a  volume  —  of  course,  an 
entirely  different  thing.  Mr.  Simon,  at  any  rate,  assures 
us  that  no  available  written  material  existed  for  setting 
comprehensively  before  the  public,  in  Coleridge's  own  lan- 
guage, and  in  an  argued  form,  the  philosophical  system 
with  which  he  wished  his  name  to  be  identified.  Instead 
of  it  there  were  fragments  —  for  the  most  part  mutually 
inadaptable  fragments,  and  beginnings,  and  studies  of  spe- 
cial subjects,  and  numberless  notes  on  the  margins  and  fly- 
leaves of  books. 

With  this  equipment,  such  as  it  was,  Mr.  Green  set  to 
work  to  methodise  the  Coleridgian  doctrines,  and  to  con- 
struct from  them  nothing  less  than  such  a  system  of  phi- 
losophy as  should  "  virtually  include  the  law  and  expla- 
nation of  all  being,  conscious  and  unconscious,  and  of  all 
correlativity  and  duty,  and  be  applicable  directly  or  by  de- 
duction to  whatsoever  the  human  mind  can  contemplate 
— sensuous  or  supersensuous — of  experience,  purpose,  or 
imagination."  Born  under  post-diluvian  conditions,  Mr. 
Green  was  of  course  unable  to  accomplish  his  self-proposed 


XI.]  METAPHYSICS  AND  THEOLOGY.  116 

enterprise,  but  he  must  be  allowed  to  have  attacted  his 
task  with  remarkable  energy,  "  Theology,  ethics,  politics 
and  political  history,  ethnology,  language,  aesthetics,  psy- 
chology, physics,  and  the  allied  sciences,  biology,  logic, 
mathematics,  pathology,  all  these  subjects,"  declares  his 
biographer,  "  were  thoughtfully  studied  by  him,  in  at  least 
their  basial  principles  and  metaphysics,  and  most  were  elab- 
orately written  of,  as  though  for  the  divisions  of  some  vast 
cyclopaedic  work,"  At  an  early  period  of  his  labours  he 
thought  it  convenient  to  increase  his  knowledge  of  Greek ; 
he  began  to  study  Hebrew  when  more  than  sixty  years  old, 
and  still  later  in  life  he  took  up  Sanscrit.  It  was  not  un- 
til he  was  approaching  his  seventieth  year  and  found  his 
health  beginning  to  fail  him  that  Mr,  Green  seems  to  have 
felt  that  his  design,  in  its  more  ambitious  scope,  must  be 
abandoned,  and  that,  in  the  impossibility  of  applying  the 
Coleridgian  system  of  philosophy  to  all  human  knowledge, 
it  was  his  imperative  duty  under  his  literary  trust  to  work 
out  that  particular  application  of  it  which  its  author  had 
most  at  heart.  Already,  in  an  unpublished  work  which  he 
had  made  it  the  first  care  of  his  trusteeship  to  compose,  he 
had,  though  but  roughly  and  imperfectly,  as  he  considered, 
exhibited  the  relation  of  his  master's  doctrines  to  revealed 
religion,  and  it  had  now  become  time  to  supersede  this  un- 
published compendium,  the  Religio  Laid,  as  he  had  styled 
it,  by  a  fuller  elaboration  of  the  great  Coleridgian  position 
that "  Christianity,  rightly  understood,  is  identical  with  the 
highest  philosophy,  and  that,  apart  from  all  question  of 
historical  evidence,  the  essential  doctrines  of  Christianity 
are  necessary  and  eternal  truths  of  reason — truths  which 
man,  by  the  vouchsafed  light  of  Nature  and  without  aid 
from  documents  or  tradition,  may  always  and  anywhere 
discover  for  himself."    To  this  work  accordingly  Mr.  Green 


116  COLERIDGE.  [cuap. 

devoted  the  few  remaining  years  of  his  life,  and,  dying  in 
1863  at  the  age  of  seventy-two,  left  behind  him  in  MS. 
the  work  entitled  Spiritual  Philosophy :  founded  on  the 
teaching  of  the  late  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  which  was 
published  two  years  later,  together  with  the  memoir  of  the 
author,  from  which  I  have  quoted,  by  Mr.  John  Simon.  It 
consists  of  two  volumes,  the  first  of  which  is  devoted  to 
the  exposition  of  the  general  principles  of  Coleridge's  phi- 
losophy, while  the  second  is  entirely  theological,  and  aims 
at  indicating,  on  principles  for  which  the  first  voUime  has 
contended,  the  essential  doctrines  of  Christianity. 

The  earlier  chapters  of  this  volume  Mr.  Green  devotes  to 
an  exposition  (if  indeed  the  word  can  be  applied  to  what 
is  really  a  catalogue  of  the  results  of  a  transcendental  in- 
tuition) of  the  essential  difference  between  the  reason  and 
the  understanding — a  distinction  which  Coleridge  has  him- 
self elsewhere  described  as  pre-eminently  the  gradus  ad 
philosophiam,  and  might  well  have  called  it?,  pons  asinorum. 
In  the  second  part  of  his  first  volume  Mr.  Green  applies 
himself  to  the  establishment  of  a  position  which,  funda- 
mental as  it  must  be  accounted  in  all  philosophical  specu- 
lations of  this  school,  is  absolutely  vital  to  the  theology 
which  Coleridge  sought  to  erect  upon  a  metaphysical  ba- 
sis. This  position  is  that  the  human  will  is  to  be  regarded 
as  the  one  ultimate  fact  of  self-consciousness.  So  long  as 
man  confines  himself  to  the  contemplation  of  his  percipi- 
ent and  reflective  self  alone — so  long  as  he  attends  only  to 
those  modes  of  consciousness  which  are  produced  in  him 
by  the  impressions  of  the  senses  and  the  operations  of 
thought,  he  can  never  hope  to  escape  from  the  famous  re- 
ductio  ad  inscihile  of  Hume.  He  can  never  afiirm  anything 
more  than  the  existence  of  those  modes  of  consciousness, 
or  assert,  at  least  as  a  direct  deliverance  of  intuition,  that 


xr.]  METAPHYSICS  AND  THEOLOGY.  Ill 

his  conscious  self  is  anything  apart  from  the  perceptions 
and  concepts  to  which  lie  is  attending.  But  when  he  turns 
from  his  perceiving  and  thinking  to  his  wilUng  self  he  be- 
comes for  the  first  time  aware  of  something  deeper  than 
tlie  mere  objective  presentations  of  consciousness ;  he  ob- 
tains a  direct  intuition  of  an  originant,  causative,  and  in- 
dependent self-existence.  lie  will  have  attained  in  short 
to  the  knowledge  of  a  noumenon,  and  of  the  only  knowa- 
ble  noumenon.  The  barrier,  elsewhere  insuperable  between 
the  subject  and  object,  is  broken  down  ;  that  Avhicli  knows 
becomes  identified  with  that  which  is;  and  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  will  the  consciousness  also  of  a  self,  as  some- 
thing independent  of  and  superior  to  its  own  modifications, 
is  not  so  much  affirmed  as  acquired.  The  essence,  in  short, 
of  the  Coleridgian  ontology  consists  in  the  alteration  of  a 
single  though  a  very  important  word  in  the  well-known 
Cartesian  formula.  Cogito  ergo  sum  had  been  shown  by 
Hume  to  involve  an  illicit  process  of  reasoning.  Descartes, 
according  to  the  Scottish  sceptic,  had  no  right  to  have  said 
more  than  Cogito  ergo  cogitationes  sunt.  But  substitute 
willing  for  thinking,  convert  the  formula  into  Volo  ergo 
sum,  and  it  becomes  irrefragable. 

So  far  as  I  can  perceive,  it  would  have  been  sufficient 
for  Mr.  Green's  subsequent  argument  to  have  thus  estab- 
lished the  position  of  the  will  as  the  ultimate  fact  of  con- 
sciousness, but  he  goes  on  to  assert  that  he  has  thus  se- 
cured the  immovable  ground  of  a  phil«sophy  of  Realism. 
For  since  man,  "  in  aflSrming  his  Personality  by  the  verb 
substantive  I  am,  asserts,  nay,  acquires,  the  knowledge  of 
his  own  Substance  as  a  Spiritual  being,  and  thereby  knows 
what  substance  truly  and  properly  is,  so  he  contemplates 
the  outward,  persons  or  things,  as  subjects  partaking  of 
reality  by  virtue  of  the  same  substance  of  which  he  is  con- 


1V8  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

scious  in  his  own  person."  So  far,  however,  from  this 
being  a  philosophy  of  Realism,  it  is  in  efiect,  if  not  indeed 
in  actual  terms,  a  philosophy  of  Idealism.  I,  at  least,  am 
unable  to  see  how  any  Idealist,  from  Berkeley  downwards, 
could  ask  for  a  better  definition  of  his  theory  of  the  ex- 
ternal world  than  that  it  "  partakes  of  reality  by  virtue  of 
the  same  substance  of  which  he  is  conscious  in  his  own 
person." 

But  it  is,  of  course,  with  the  second  volume  of  Mr. 
Green's  work  that  one  is  chiefly  concerned.  Had  Cole- 
ridge been  a  mere  Transcendentalist  for  Transcendental- 
ism's sake,  had  there  been  no  connection  between  his  phi- 
losophy of  Being  and  his  religious  creed,  it  might  be  a 
question  whether  even  the  highly  condensed  and  necessa- 
rily imperfect  sketch  which  has  here  been  given  of  it  would 
not  have  been  superfluous  and  out  of  place.  But  Coleridge 
was  a  Theosophist  first,  and  a  philosopher  afterwards ;  it 
was  mainly  as  an  organon  of  religion  that  he  valued  his 
philosophy,  and  it  was  to  the  development  and  perfection 
of  it,  as  such  otyanon,  that  he  may  be  said  to  have  de- 
voted, so  far  as  it  could  be  redeemed  from  its  enthralment 
to  lower  necessities,  the  whole  of  the  latter  half  of  his 
career.  No  account  of  his  life,  therefore,  could  be  com- 
plete without  at  least  some  brief  glance  at  the  details  of 
this  notable  attempt  to  lead  the  world  to  true  religion  by 
the  road  of  the  Transcendental  philosophy.  It  is  difficult, 
of  course,  for  those  who  have  been  trained  in  a  wholly 
different  school  of  thought  to  do  justice  to  processes  of 
reasoning  carried  on,  as  they  cannot  but  hold,  in  terms 
of  the  inconceivable ;  it  is  still  more  diflScult  to  be  sure 
that  you  have  done  justice  to  it  after  all  has  been  said ; 
and  I  think  that  no  candid  student  of  the  Coleridgian 
philosophico-theology  (not  being  a  professed  disciple  of 


XI.]  METAPHYSICS  AND  THEOLOGY.  1V9 

it,  and  therefore  bound,  at  any  rate,  to  feign  familiarity 
with  incomprehensibilities)  will  deny  that  he  is  often  com- 
pelled to  formulate  its  positions  and  recite  its  processes  in 
somewhat  of  the  same  modest  and  confiding  spirit  as  ani- 
mates those  youthful  geometricians  who  learn  their  Euclid 
by  heart.  With  this  proviso  I  will,  as  briefly  as  may  be, 
trace  the  course  of  the  dialectic  by  which  Mr.  Green  seeks 
to  make  the  Coleridgian  metaphysics  demonstrative  of  the 
truth  of  Christianity. 

Having  shown  that  the  Will  is  the  true  and  the  only 
tenable  base  of  Philosophic  Realism,  the  writer  next  pro- 
ceeds to  explain  the  growth  of  the  Soul,  from  its  rudi- 
mental  strivings  in  its  fallen  condition  to  the  development 
of  its  spiritual  capabilities,  and  to  trace  its  ascent  to  the 
conception  of  the  Idea  of  God.  The  argument  —  if  we 
may  apply  so  definite  a  name  to  a  process  which  is  con- 
tinually forced  to  appeal  to  something  that  may  perhaps 
be  higher,  but  is  certainly  other  than  the  ratiocinative  fac- 
ulty— is  founded  partly  on  moral  and  partly  on  intellectual 
considerations.  By  an  analysis  of  the  moral  phenomena 
associated  with  the  action  of  the  human  will,  and,  in  par- 
ticular, of  the  conflict  which  arises  between  "  the  tendency 
of  all  Will  to  make  itself  absolute,"  and  the  consciousness 
that,  under  the  conditions  of  man's  fallen  state,  nothing 
but  misery  could  result  both  to  the  individual  and  the  race 
from  the  fulfilment  of  this  tendency  —  Mr.  Green  shows 
how  the  Soul,  or  the  Reason,  or  the  Speculative  Intellect 
(for  he  seems  to  use  all  three  expressions  indiscriminately) 
is  morally  prepared  for  the  reception  of  the  truth  which 
his  Understanding  alone  could  never  have  compassed — 
the  Idea  of  God.  Tliis  is  in  effect  neither  more  nor  less 
than  a  restatement  of  that  time-honoured  argument  for 
the  existence  of  some  Being  of  perfect  holiness  which  has 


180  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

always  weighed  so  much  with  men  of  high  spiri'tuaficy  as 
to  bHnd  thera  to  the  fact  of  its  actually  enhancing  the 
intellectual  difficulties  of  the  situation.  Man  possesses  a 
Will  which  longs  to  fulfil  itself;  but  it  is  coupled  with  a 
nature  which  constantly  impels  him  to  those  gratifications 
of  will  which  tend  not  to  self-preservation  and  progress, 
but  to  their  contraries.  Surely,  then,  on  the  strength  of 
the  mere  law  of  life,  which  prevails  everywhere,  there 
must  be  some  higher  archetypal  Will,  to  which  human 
wills,  or  rather  certain  selected  examples  of  them,  may 
more  and  more  conform  themselves,  and  in  which  the 
union  of  unlimited  efficiency  in  operation  with  unqualified 
purity  of  aim  has  been  once  for  all  effected.  Or  to  put 
it  yet  another  way  :  The  life  of  the  virtuous  man  is  a  life 
auxiliary  to  the  preservation  and  progress  of  the  race ;  but 
his  will  is  under  restraint.  The  will  of  the  vicious  man 
energises  fi-eely  enough,  but  his  life  is  hostile  to  the  pres- 
ervation and  progress  of  the  race.  Now  the  natural  and 
essential  nisus  of  all  Will  is  towards  absolute  freedom. 
But  nothing  in  life  has  a  natural  and  essential  nisus  to- 
wards that  which  tends  to  its  deterioration  and  extinction. 
Therefore,  there  must  be  some  ultimate  means  of  recon- 
oiling  absolute  freedom  of  the  Will  with  perfectly  salutary 
conditions  of  its  exercise.  And  since  Mr.  Green,  like  his 
master  and  all  other  Platonists,  is  incapable  of  stopping 
here,  and  contenting  himself  with  assuming  the  existence 
of  a  "  stream  of  tendency "  which  will  gradually  bring 
the  human  will  into  the  required  conditions,  he  here 
makes  the  inevitable  Platonic  jump,  and  proceeds  io  con- 
clude that  there  must  be  a  self-existent  ideal  Will  in  which 
absolute  freedom  and  power  concur  with  perfect  purity 
and  holiness. 

So  much  for  the  moral  part  of  Mr.  Green's  proof,  which 


XI.]  MR.  GREEX'S  SPIRITUAL  PHILOSOPHY.  181 

so  far  fails,  it  will  be  observed,  to  carry  us  muck  beyond 
the  Pantheistic  position.  It  has,  that  is  to  say,  to  be 
proved  that  the  "  power  not  ourselves,"  which  has  been 
called  Will,  originates  in  some  source  to  which  we  should 
be  rationally  justified  in  giving  the  name  of  "God;"  and, 
singular  as  such  a  thing  may  seem,  it  is  impossible  at  any 
rate  for  the  logic  of  the  understanding  to  regard  Mr. 
Green's  argument  on  this  point  as  otherwise  than  hope- 
lessly circular.  The  half-dozen  pages  or  so  which  he 
devotes  to  the  refutation  of  the  Pantheistic  view  reduce 
themselves  to  the  following  simple  -petitio  principii:  the 
power  is  first  assumed  to  be  a  Will ;  it  is  next  affirmed 
with  perfect  truth  that  the  very  notion  of  Will  would 
escape  us  except  under  the  condition  of  Personality ;  and 
from  this  the  existence  of  a  personal  God  as  the  source  of 
the  power  in  question  deduced.  And  the  same  vice  un- 
derlies the  further  argument  by  which  Mr.  Green  meets 
the  familiar  objection  to  the  personality  of  the  Absolute 
as  involving  contradictory  conceptions.  An  infinite  Per- 
son, he  argues,  is  no  contradiction  in  terms,  unless  "  fiuition 
or  limitation"  be  regarded  as  identical  with  "negation" 
(which,  when  applied  to  a  hypothetical  Infinite,  one  would 
surely  think  it  is)  ;  and  an  Absolute  Will  is  not  the  less 
absolute  from  being  self-determined  ab  intra.  For  how, 
he  asks,  can  any  Will  which  is  causative  of  reality  be  con- 
ceived as  a  Will  except  by  conceiving  it  as  se  finiens,  pre- 
determining itself  to  the  specific  processes  required  by  the 
act  of  causation  ?  How,  indeed  ?  But  the  answer  of  a 
Pantheist  would  of  course  be  that  the  very  impossibility 
of  conceiving  of  Will  except  as  se  finiens  is  his  very  ground 
for  rejecting  the  notion  of  a  volitional  (in  the  sense  of  a 
personal)  origin  of  the  cosmos. 

However,  it  is  beyond  my  purposes  to  enter  into  any 


182  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

detailed  criticism  of  Mr.  Green's  position,  more  especially 
as  I  have  not  yet  reached  the  central  and  capital  point  of 
his  spiritual  philosophy  —  the  construction  of  the  Chris- 
tian theology  on  the  basis  of  the  Coleridgian  metaphysics. 
Having  deduced  the  Idea  of  God  from  man's  conscious- 
ness of  an  individual  Will  perpetually  affirming  itself,  Mr. 
Green  proceeds  to  evolve  the  Idea  of  the  Trinity,  by  (as 
he  considers  it)  an  equally  necessary  process  from  two  of 
the  invariable  accompaniments  of  the  above-mentioned 
introspective  act.  "  For  as  in  our  consciousness,"  he  truly 
says,  "we  are  under  the  necessity  of  distinguishing  the 
relation  of  '  myself,'  now  as  the  subject  thinking  and  now 
as  the  object  contemplated  in  the  manifold  of  thought,  so 
we  might  express  the  relations  in  the  Divine  instance  as 
Deus  Subjectivus  and  Deus  Objectivus — that  is,  the  Ab- 
solute Subjectivity  or  Supreme  Will,  uttering  itself  as  and 
contemplating  itself  in  the  Absolute  Objectivity  or  pleni- 
tude of  Being  eternally  and  causatively  realised  in  his  Per- 
sonality." AVhence  it  follows  (so  runs  or  seems  to  run 
the  argument)  that  the  Idea  of  God  the  Father  as  neces- 
sarily involves  the  Idea  of  God  the  Son  as  the  "I"  who, 
as  the  thinking  subject,  contemplate  myself,  implies  the 
contemplated  "  Me  "  as  the  object  thought  of.  Again, 
the  man  who  reflects  on  the  fact  of  his  consciousness, 
"  which  discloses  to  him  the  unavoidable  opposition  of 
subject  and  object  in  the  self  of  which  he  is  conscious, 
cannot  fail  to  see  that  the  conscious  mind  requires  not 
only  the  distinction  in  order  to  the  act  of  reflection  in 
itself,  but  the  continual  sense  of  the  relative  nature  of  the 
distinction  and  of  the  essential  oneness  of  the  mind  itself." 
Whence  it  follows  (so  runs  or  seems  to  run  the  argument) 
that  the  Idea  of  the  first  two  Persons  of  the  Trinity  as 
necessarily  involves  the  Idea  of  the  Third  Person,  as  the 


XI.]  MR.  GREEN'S  SPIRITUAL  PHILOSOPHY.  183 

contemplation  of  the  "Me"  by  the  "I"  implies  the  per- 
petual consciousness  that  tlie  contemplator  and  the  con- 
templated —  the  "  I "  and  the  "  Me  "  —  are  one.  In  this 
manner  is  the  Idea  of  the  Trinity  shown  to  be  involved 
in  the  Idea  of  God,  and  to  arise  out  of  it  by  an  implica- 
tion as  necessary  as  that  which  connects  together  the 
three  phases  of  consciousness  attendant  upon  every  self- 
contemplative  act  of  the  individual  mind.' 

It  may  readily  be  imagined  that  after  the  Speculative 
Reason  has  been  made  to  perform  such  feats  as  these  the 
remainder  of  the  work  proposed  to  it  could  present  no 
serious  difficulty.  And  in  the  half-dozen  chapters  which 
follow  it  is  made  to  evolve  in  succession  the  doctrine  of 
the  Incarnation,  the  Advent,  and  the  Atonement  of  Christ, 
and  to  explain  the  mysteries  of  the  fall  of  man  and  of 
original  sin.  Considered  in  the  aspect  in  which  Coleridge 
himself  would  have  preferred  to  regard  his  pupil's  Avork, 
namely  as  a  systematic  attempt  to  lead  the  minds  of  men 
to  Christianity  by  an  intellectual  route,  no  more  hopeless 
enterprise  perhaps  could  have  been  conceived  than  that 
embodied  in  these  volumes.  It  is  like  offering  a  traveller 
a  guide-book  written  in  hieroglyphics.  Upon  the  most 
liberal  computation  it  is  probable  that  not  one-fourth  part 

*  Were  it  not  hazardous  to  treat  processes  of  the  Speculative  Rea- 
son as  we  deal  with  the  vulgar  dialectic  of  the  Understanding,  one 
would  be  disposed  to  reply  that  if  the  above  argument  proves  the 
existence  of  three  persons  in  the  Godhead,  it  must  equally  prove  the 
existence  of  three  persons  in  every  man  who  reflects  upon  bis  con- 
scious self.  That  the  Divine  Mind,  when  engaged  in  the  act  of  self- 
contemplation,  must  be  conceived  under  three  relations  is  doubtless 
as  true  as  that  the  human  mind,  when  so  engaged,  must  be  so  con- 
ceived ;  but  that  these  three  relations  are  so  many  objective  realities 
is  what  Mr.  Green  asserts  indeed  a  few  pages  farther  on,  but  what 
he  nowhere  attempts  to  prove. 
N       9 


184  COLERIDGE.  [chap.  xi. 

of  educated  mankind  are  capable  of  so  mucli  as  compre- 
hending the  philosophic  doctrine  upon  which  Coleridge 
seeks  to  base  Christianity,  and  it  is  doubtful  whether  any 
but  a  still  smaller  fraction  of  these  would  admit  that  the 
foundation  was  capable  of  supporting  the  superstructure. 
That  the  writings  of  the  pupil,  like  the  teachings  of  the 
master  whom  he  interprets,  may  serve  the  cause  of  relig- 
ion in  another  than  an  intellectual  way  is  possible  enough. 
Not  a  few  of  the  functions  assigned  to  the  Speculative 
Eeason  will  strike  many  of  us  as  moral  and  spiritual  rath- 
er than  intellectual  in  their  character,  and  the  appeal  to 
them  is  in  fact  an  appeal  to  man  to  chasten  the  lower 
passions  of  his  nature,  and  to  discipline  his  unruly  will. 
Exhortations  of  that  kind  are  religious  all  the  world  of 
philosophy  over,  and  will  succeed  in  proportion  to  the 
moral  fervour  and  oratorical  power  which  distinguish  them. 
But  if  the  benefits  of  Coleridge's  theological  teachings  are 
to  be  reduced  to  this,  it  would  of  course  have  been  much 
better  to  have  dissociated  them  altogether  from  the  ex- 
ceedingly abstruse  metaphysic  to  which  they  have  been 
wedded. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

Coleridge's  tositiox  in  nis  later  years.— nis  discourse. 

—HIS  nSTFLUENCE  ON  CONTEMPORARY  THOUGHT. —FINAL  RE- 
VIEW OP  HIS  INTELLECTUAL  WORK. 

The  critic  who  would  endeavour  to  appreciate  the  posi- 
tion which  Coleridge  fills  in  the  history  of  literature  and 
thought  for  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  must,  if 
he  possesses  ordinary  candour  and  courage,  begin,  I  think, 
with  a  confession.  He  must  confess  an  inability  to  com- 
prehend the  precise  manner  in  which  that  position  was  at- 
tained, and  the  precise  grounds  on  Avhich  it  was  recognized. 
For  vast  as  were  Coleridge's  powers  of  thought  and  expres- 
sion, and  splendid,  if  incomplete,  as  is  the  record  which 
they  have  left  behind  them  in  his  works,  they  Avcre  never 
directed  to  purposes  of  instruction  or  persuasion  in  any- 
thing like  that  systematic  and  concentrated  manner  which 
is  necessary  to  him  who  would  found  a  school.  Cole- 
ridge's writings  on  philosophical  and  theological  subjects 
were  essentially  discursive,  fragmentary,  incomplete.  Even 
when  he  professes  an  intention  of  exhausting  his  subject  and 
affects  a  logical  arrangement,  it  is  not  long  before  he  forgets 
the  design  and  departs  from  the  order.  His  disquisitions 
are  in  no  sense  connected  treatises  on  the  subjects  to  which 
they  relate.  Brilliant  aper^us,  gnomic  sayings,  fl-ights  of 
fervid  eloquence,  infinitely  suggestive  reflections — of  these 


186  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

there  is  enough  and  to  spare ;  but  these,  though  an  ample 
equipment  for  the  critic,  are  not  sufficient  for  the  construc- 
tive philosopher.  Nothing,  it  must  be  frankly  said,  in 
Coleridge's  philosophical  and  theological  writings  —  noth- 
ing, that  is  to  say,  -which  appeals  in  them  to  the  mere  in- 
telligence— suffices  to  explain,  at  least  to  the  appreciation 
of  posterity,  the  fact  that  he  was  surrounded  during  these 
closing  years  of  his  life  by  an  eager  crowd  of  real  or  sup- 
posed disciples,  including  two,  at  any  rate,  of  the  most 
remarkable  personalities  of  the  time.  And  if  nothing  in 
Coleridge's  writings  serves  to  account  for  it,  so  neither 
does  anything  traceable  or  tangible  in  the  mere  matter  of 
his  conversations.  This  last  point,  however,  is  one  which 
must  be  for  the  present  reserved.  I  wish  for  the  moment 
to  confine  myself  to  the  fact  of  Coleridge's  position  during 
his  later  life  at  Highgate.  To  this  we  have,  as  we  all 
know,  an  extremely  eminent  witness,  and  one  from  whose 
evidence  most  people,  one  may  suppose,  are  by  this  time 
able  to  make  their  own  deductions  in  all  matters  relating 
to  the  persons  with  whom  he  was  brought  into  contact. 
Carlyle  on  Charles  Lamb,  few  as  the  sour  sentences  are, 
must  always  warn  us  to  be  careful  how  we  follow  Carlyle 
"on"  anybody  Avhomsoever.  But  there  is  no  evidence  of 
any  ill  feeling  on  Carlyle's  part  towards  Coleridge — noth- 
ing but  a  humorous,  kindly-contemptuous  compassion  for 
his  weaknesses  and  eccentricities  ;  and  the  famous  descrip- 
tion in  the  Life  of  Sterling  may  be  taken  therefore  as  a 
fairly  accurate  account  of  the  man  and  the  circumstances 
to  which  it  refers  : 

"  Coleritlgc  sat  on  the  brow  of  Higbgate  Hill  in  those  years  look- 
ing down  on  London  and  its  smoke  tumult  like  a  sage  escaped  from 
the  inanity  of  life's  battle,  attracting  towards  him  the  thoughts  of 
innumerable  brave  souls  still  engaged  there.     Ilis  express  contribu- 


XII.]  CARLYLFS  nCTURE.  187 

tious  to  poetry,  philosophy,  or  any  specific  province  of  human  litera- 
ture or  enlightenment  hud  been  small  and  sadly  intermittent ;  but  he 
had,  especially  among  young  inquiring  men,  a  higher  than  literary,  a 
kind  of  prophetic  or  magician  character.  He  was  thought  to  hold — 
he  alone  in  England — the  key  of  German  and  other  Transcendental- 
isms ;  knew  the  sublime  secret  of  believing  by  the  '  reason '  what  the 
'understanding'  had  been  obliged  to  fling  out  as  incredible;  and 
could  still,  after  Ilume  and  Voltaire  had  done  their  best  and  worst 
with  him,  profess  himself  an  orthodox  Christian,  and  say  and  point 
to  the  Church  of  England,  with  its  singular  old  rubrics  and  surplices 
at  Allhallowtide,  Esto  perpdua.  A  sublime  man  ;  who  alone  in  those 
dark  days  had  saved  his  crown  of  spiritual  manhood,  escaping  from 
the  black  materialisms  and  revolutionary  deluges  with  '  God,  Free- 
dom, Immortality,'  still  his  ;  a  king  of  men.  The  practical  intellects 
of  the  world  did  not  much  heed  him,  or  carelessly  reckoned  him  a 
metaphysical  dreamer;  but  to  the  rising  spirits  of  the  young  genera- 
tion he  had  tliis  dusky  sublime  character,  and  sat  there  as  a  kind  of 
Magus,  girt  in  mystery  and  enigma ;  his  Dodona  oak-grove  (Mr.  Gill- 
man's  house  at  Highgate)  whispering  strange  things,  uncertain  wheth- 
er oracles  or  jargon." 

Tho  above  quotation  wonkl  suffice  for  rny  immediate 
purpose,  but  it  is  impos.-^lble  to  deny  oneself  or  one's  read- 
ers the  pleasure  of  a  n-frcslied  recollection  of  the  nolle 
landscape-scene  and  tlic  masterly  portrait  tliat  follow  : 

"  The  Gillmans  did  not  encourage  much  company  or  excitation  of 
any  sort  round  their  sage;  nevertheless,  access  to  him,  if  a  youth  did 
reverently  wish  it,  was  not  diflBcult.  He  would  stroll  about  the  pleas- 
ant garden  with  you,  sit  in  the  pleasant  rooms  of  the  place — perhaps 
take  you  to  his  own  peculiar  room,  high  up,  with  a  rearward  view, 
which  was  the  chief  view  of  all.  A  really  charming  outlook  in  line 
weather.  Close  at  hand  wide  sweeps  of  flowing  leafy  gardens,  their 
few  houses  mostly  hidden,  the  very  chimney-pots  veiled  under  blos- 
soming umbrage,  flowed  gloriously  down  hill ;  gloriously  issuing  in 
wide-tufted  undulating  plain  country,  rich  in  all  charms  of  Celd  and 
town.  Waving  blooming  country  of  the  brightest  green,  dotted 
all  over  with  handsome  villas,  handsome  groves  crossed  by  roads 
and  human  traflic,  here  inauili'ilc,  or  heard  onlv  as  a  musical  hum  ; 


188  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

and  beliind  all  swam,  under  olive-tinted  haze,  the  illimitable  limitary 
ocean  of  London,  with  its  domes  and  steeples  defiuite  in  the  sun,  big 
Paul's  and  the  many  memories  attached  to  it  hanging  high  over  all. 
Nowhere  of  its  kind  could  you  see  a  grander  prospect  on  a  bright 
summer  da}',  with  the  set  of  the  air  going  southward — southward, 
and  so  draping  with  the  city  smoke  not  you  but  the  city." 

Then  comes  tlie  invariable  final  touch,  the  one  dash  of 
blaclc — or  green,  shall  we  call  it — without  which  the  mas- 
ter left  no  picture  that  liad  a  human  figure  in  the  fore- 
ground : 

"  Here  for  hours  would  Coleridge  talk  concerning  all  conceivable 
or  inconceivable  things;  and  liked  nothing  better  than  to  have  an 
intelligent,  or,  failing  that,  even  a  silent  and  patient  human  listener. 
lie  distinguished  himself  to  all  that  ever  heard  him  as  at  least  the 
most  surprising  talker  extant  in  this  world — and  to  some  small  mi- 
nority, by  no  means  to  all,  as  the  most  excellent." 

Then  follows  the  well-known,  wonderfully  vivid,  cynical- 
ly pathetic  sketch  of  the  man  : 

"  The  good  man — he  was  now  getting  old,  towards  sixty  perhaps, 
and  gave  you  the  idea  of  a  life  that  had  been  full  of  sufferings ;  a 
life  heav3'-ladeu,  half-vanquished,  still  swimming  painfully  in  seas  of 
manifold  physical  and  other  bewilderment.  Brow  and  head  were 
round  and  of  massive  weight,  but  the  face  was  flabby  and  irresolute. 
The  deep  eyes,  of  a  light  hazel,  were  as  full  of  sorrow  as  of  inspira- 
tion;  confused  pain  looked  mildly  from  them,  as  in  a  kind  of  mild 
astonishment.  The  whole  figure  and  air,  good  and  amiable  otherwise, 
might  be  called  flabby  and  irresolute ;  expressive  of  weakness  under 
possibility  of  strength.  He  hung  loosely  on  his  limbs,  with  knees 
bent,  and  stooping  attitude;  in  walking  he  rather  shuffled  than  de- 
cisively stepl ;  and  a  lady  once  remarked  he  never  could  fix  which 
side  of  the  garden-walk  would  suit  him  best,  but  continually  shifted, 
corkscrew  fashion,  and  kept  trying  both ;  a  heavy-laden,  high-aspir- 
ing, and  surely  much-suffering  man.  His  voice,  naturally  soft  and 
good,  had  contracted  itself  into  a  plaintive  snuffle  and  sing-song  ;  he 
spoke  as  if  preaching — you  could  have  said  preaching  eai'nestly  and 
almost  hopelessly  the  weightiest  things.    I  still  recollect  his  '  object ' 


XII.]  COLERIDGE'S  DISCOURSE.  189' 

and  '  subject,'  terms  of  continual  recurrence  in  the  Kautean  prov- 
ince ;  and  liow  he  sang  and  snuffled  them  into  '  om-m-ject '  and 
'sum-m-mject,'  with  a  Ivind  of  solemn  shake  or  quaver  as  he  rolled 
along.'  No  talk  in  his  century  or  in  any  other  could  be  more  sur- 
prising." 

Such,  as  he  appeared  to  this  half- contemptuous,  half- 
compassionate,  but  ever  acute  observer,  was  Coleridge  at 
this  the  zenith  of  his  influence  over  the  nascent  thought 
of  his  day.  Such  to  Carlyle  seemed  the  manner  of  the 
deliverance  of  the  oracles ;  in  his  view  of  their  matter,  as 
we  all  know  from  an  equally  well-remembered  passage,  his 
tolerance  disappears,  and  his  account  here,  with  all  its 
racy  humour,  is  almost  wholly  impatient.  Talk,  "  suffering 
no  interruption,  however  reverent,  hastily  putting  aside 
all  foreign  additions,  annotation,  or  most  ingenuous  de- 
sires for  elucidation,  as  well-meant  superfluities  which 
would  never  do ;"  talk  "  not  flowing  any  whither,  like  a 
river,  but  spreading  everywhither  in  inextricable  currents 
and  regurgitations  like  a  lake  or  sea;"  a  "confused  unin- 
telligible flood  of  utterance,  threatening  "to  submerge  all 
known  landmarks  of  thought  and  drown  the  world  with 
you" — this,  it  must  be  admitted,  is  not  an  easily  recog- 
nisable description  of  the  Word  of  Life.  Nor,  certainly, 
does  Carlyle's  own  personal  experience  of  its  preaching 
and  effects  —  he  having  licard  the  preacher  talk  "with 

'  No  one  who  recollects  the  equally  singular  manner  in  which  an- 
other most  distinguished  metaphysician — the  late  Dean  Mansel — was 
wont  to  quaver  forth  his  admirably  turned  and  often  highly  eloquent 
phrases  of  philosophical  exposition,  can  fail  to  be  reminded  of  him 
by  the  above  description.  No  two  temperaments  or  histories,  how- 
ever, could  be  more  dissimilar.  The  two  philosophei'S  resembled  each 
other  in  nothing  save  the  "om-mject"  and  "sum-mject"  of  their 
Btudies. 


190  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

eager  musical  energy  two  stricken  hours,  Li»  face  radiant 
and  moist,  and  communicate  no  meaning  wliatsoever  to 
any  individual  of  liis  hearers" — certain  of  whom,  the  nar- 
rator for  one,  "  still  kept  eagerly  listening  in  hope,  while 
the  most  had  long  before  given  up  and  formed  (if  the 
room  was  large  enough)  humming  groups  of  their  own." 
"lie  began  anywhere,"  continues  this  irresistibly  comic 
sketch;  "you  put  some  question  to  him,  made  some  sug- 
gestive observation ;  instead  of  answering  this,  or  decid- 
edly setting  out  towards  an  answer  of  it,  he  Avould  ac- 
cumulate formidable  apparatus,  logical  swim-bladders,  tran- 
scendental life-preservers,  and  other  precautionary  and 
vehiculatory  gear  for  setting  out;  perhaps  did  at  last  get 
under  way — but  was  swiftly  solicited,  turned  aside  by  the 
flame  of  some  radiant  new  game  on  this  hand  or  on  that 
into  new  courses,  and  ever  into  new ;  and  before  long 
into  all  the  universe,  where  it  was  uncertain  what  game 
you  would  catch,  or  whether  any."  lie  had,  indeed,  ac- 
cording to  the  dissatisfied  listener,  "  not  the  least  talent 
for  explaining  this  or  anything  to  them ;  and  you  swam 
and  fluttered  on  the  mistiest,  wide,  unintelligible  deluge 
of  things  for  most  part  in  a  rather  profitless  uncomfort- 
able manner."  And  the  few  vivid  phrases  of  eulogy  which 
follow  seem  only  to  deepen  by  contrast  the  prevailing  hue 
of  the  picture.  The  "  glorious  islets "  Avhicli  were  some- 
times seen  to  "  rise  out  of  the  haze,"  the  "  balmy  sunny 
islets  of  the  blest  and  the  intelligible,  at  whose  emergence 
the  secondary  humming  group  would  all  cease  humming 
and  hang  breathless  upon  the  eloquent  words,  till  once 
your  islet  got  wrapped  in  the  mist  again,  and  they  would 
recommence  humming  " — these,  it  seems  to  be  suggested, 
but  rarely  revealed  themselves  ;  but  "  eloquent,  artisticaHy 
expressive  words  you  always  had  ;  piercing  radiance*  of 


xii.J  COLERIDGE'S  DISCOURSE.  191 

a  most  subtle  insight  came  at  intervals;  tones  of  noble 
pious  sympathy,  recognisable  as  pious  though  strangely 
coloured,  were  never  wanting  long;  but,  in  general,  you 
could  not  call  this  aimless  cloud-capt,  cloud-bound,  law- 
lessly meandering  discourse,  by  the  name  of  excellent  talk, 
but  only  of  surprising.  .  .  .  The  moaning  sing-song  of 
that  theosophico-mctaphysical  monotony  left  in  you  at  last 
a  very  dreary  feeling." 

It  is  tolerably  clear,  I  think,  that  some  considerable  dis- 
count must  be  allowed  upon  the  sum  of  disparagement  in 
this  famous  criticism.  We  have  learnt,  indeed,  to  be  more 
on  the  look-out  for  the  disturbing  influences  of  tempera- 
ment in  the  judginciits  of  this  atrabilious  observer  than 
was  the  case  when  ihe  Life  of  Sierlbig  was  written,  and 
it  is  difficult  to  doubt  that  the  unfavourable  strokes  in 
the  above-quoted  description  have  been  unduly  multiplied 
and  deepened,  partly  in  the  mere  waywardness  of  a  sar- 
castic humour,  and  partly  perhaps  from  a  less  excusable 
cause.  It  is  always  dangerous  to  accept  one  remarkable 
talker's  view  of  the  characteristics  of  another ;  and  if  this 
is  true  of  men  who  merely  compete  with  each  other  in 
the  ordinary  give-and-take  of  the  dinner-table  epigramma- 
tist and  raconteur,  the  caution  is  doubly  necessary  in  the 
case  of  two  rival  prophets — tv.'o  competing  oracles.  There 
are  those  among  us  who  hold  that  the  conversation  of  the 
Chelsea  sage,  in  his  later  years,  resembled  his  own  de- 
scription of  the  Highgate  philosopher's,  in  this,  at  any 
rate,  that  it  was  mightily  intolerant  of  interruption  ;  and 
one  is  apt  to  suspect  that  at  no  time  of  his  life  did  Car- 
lyle  "  understand  duologue "  much  better  than  Coleridge. 
It  is  probable  enough,  therefore,  that  the  young  lay-preach- 
er did  not  quite  relish  being  silenced  by  the  elder,  and 
that  his  account  of  the  sermons  was  coloured  by  the  rec- 
9* 


l'J2  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

ollection  that  bis  own  remained  undelivered.  There  is  an 
abundance  of  evidence  that  the  "glorious  islets"  emerged 
far  more  often  from  the  transcendental  haze  than  Carlyle 
would  have  us  suppose.  Hazlitt,  a  bitter  assailant  of 
Coleridge's,  and  whose  caustic  remark  that  "  his  talk  was 
excellent  if  you  let  him  start  from  no  premisses  and  come 
to  no  conclusion,"  is  cited  with  approval  by  Carlyle,  has 
elsewhere  spoken  of  Coleridge  as  the  ouly  person  from 
whom  he  ever  learned  anything,  has  said  of  him  that 
though  he  talked  on  forever  you  wished  him  to  talk  on 
forever,  that  "  his  thoughts  did  not  seem  to  come  with 
labour  and  effort,  but  as  if  borne  on  the  gusts  of  genius, 
and  as  if  the  wings  of  his  imagination  lifted  him  from  his 
feet."  And  besides  this  testimony  to  the  eloquence  Avhich 
Carlyle  only  but  inadequately  recognises,  one  should  set 
for  what  it  is  worth  De  Quincey's  evidence  to  that  conse- 
quence of  thought  which  Carlyle  denies  altogether.  To 
Do  Quincey  the  complaint  that  Coleridge  wandered  in 
his  talk  appeared  unjust.  According  to  him  the  great  dis- 
courser  only  "  seemed  to  wander,"  and  he  seemed  to  wan- 
der the  most  "  when  in  fact  his  resistance  to  the  wander- 
ing instinct  was  greatest,  viz.,  when  the  compass  and  huge 
circuit  by  which  his  illustrations  moved  travelled  farthest 
into  remote  regions  before  they  began  to  revolve.  Long 
before  this  coming  round  commenced,  most  people  had 
lost  him,  and,  naturally  enough,  supposed  that  he  had  lost 
himself.  They  contiuued  to  admire  the  separate  beauty 
of  the  thoughts,  but  did  not  see  their  relations  to  the 
dominant  theme."  De  Quincey,  however,  declares  posi- 
tively in  the  faith  of  his  "  long  and  intimate  knowledge 
of  Coleridge's  mind,  that  logic  the  most  severe  was  as  in- 
alienable from  his  modes  of  thinking  as  grammar  from 
his  language." 


Xn.]  COLERIDGE'S  DISCOURSE.  193 

Nor  should  wo  omit  tlio  testimony  of  anotlier,  a  more 
partial,  perhaps,  but  even  better  informed  judge.  The 
Table  Talk,  edited  by  Mr.  Nelson  Coleridge,  shows  how 
pregnant,  how  pithy,  how  full  of  subtle  observation,  and 
often  also  of  playful  humour,  could  be  the  talk  of  the 
great  discourser  in  its  lighter  and  more  colloquial  forms. 
The  book  indeed  is,  to  the  thinking  of  one,  at  any  rate, 
of  its  frequent  readers,  among  the  most  delightful  in  the 
world.  But  thus  speaks  its  editor  of  his  uncle's  conversa- 
tion in  his  more  serious  moods  : 

"To  pass  an  entire  day  with  Coleridge  was  a  marvellous  change 
indeed  [from  the  talk  of  daily  life].  It  was  a  Sabbath  past  expres- 
sion, deep  and  tranquil  and  serene.  You  came  to  a  man  who  had 
travelled  in  many  countries  and  in  critical  times ;  who  had  seen  and 
felt  the  world  in  most  of  its  ranks  and  in  many  of  its  vicissitudes 
and  weaknesses ;  one  to  v/hom  all  literature  and  art  were  absolutely 
subject;  and  to  whom,  with  a  reasonable  allowance  as  to  technical 
details,  all  science  was,  in  a  most  extraordinary  degree,  familiar. 
Throughout  a  long-drawn  summer's  day  would  this  man  talk  to  you 
in  low,  equable,  but  clear  and  musical  tones  concerning  things  hu- 
man and  divine ;  marshalling  all  history,  harmonising  all  experiment, 
probing  the  depths  of  your  consciousness,  and  revealing  visions  of 
glory  and  terror  to  the  imagination ;  but  pouring  withal  such  floods 
of  light  upon  the  mind  that  you  might  for  a  season,  like  Paul,  become 
blind  in  the  very  act  of  conversion.  And  this  he  would  do  without 
so  much  as  one  allusion  to  himself,  without  a  word  of  reflection  upon 
others,  save  when  any  given  art  foil  naturally  in  the  way  of  his  dis- 
course ;  without  one  anecdote  that  was  not  proof  and  illustration  of 
a  previous  position  ;  gratifying  no  passion,  indulging  no  caprice,  but, 
with  a  calm  mastery  over  your  soul,  leading  you  onward  and  onward 
forever  through  a  thousand  windings,  yet  with  no  pause,  to  some 
magnificent  point  in  which,  as  in  a  focus,  all  the  parti-coloured  rays 
of  his  discourse  should  converge  in  light.  In  all  these  he  was,  in 
truth,  your  teacher  and  guide ;  but  in  a  little  while  you  might  forget 
that  he  was  other  tlian  a  fellow-student  and  the  companion  of  your 
wa}' — so  playful  was  his  manner,  so  simple  his  language,  so  affection- 
ate the  glance  of  his  eye ! " 


194  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

Impressive,  1  owcver,  as  these  displays  may  have  been,  it 
is  impossible  to  suppose  that  their  direct  didactic  value 
as  discourses  was  at  all  considerable.  Such  as  it  was,  more- 
over, it  was  confined  in  all  probability  to  an  extremely 
select  circle  of  followers.  A  few  mystics  of  the  type  of 
Maurice,  a  few  eager  seekers  after  truth  like  Sterling,  may 
have  gathered,  or  fancied  they  gathered,  distinct  dogmatic 
instruction  from  the  Ilighgate  oracles ;  and  no  doubt,  to 
the  extent  of  bis  influence  over  tbe  former  of  these  disci- 
ples, wo  may  justly  credit  Coleridge's  discourses  witb  hav- 
ing exercised  a  real  if  only  a  transitory  directive  effect  upon 
nineteenth-century  thought.  But  the  terms  in  which  his 
influence  is  sometimes  spoken  of  appear,  as  far  as  one  can 
judge  of  the  matter  at  this  distance  of  time,  to  be  greatly 
exaggerated.  To  speak  of  it  in  the  same  way  as  we  are — 
or  were — accustomed  to  speak  of  the  influence  of  Carlyle, 
is  to  subject  it  to  an  altogether  inappropriate  comparison. 
It  is  not  merely  that  Coleridge  founded  no  recognisable 
school,  for  neither  did  Carlyle.  It  is  that  the  former  can 
show  absolutely  nothing  at  all  resembling  that  sort  of 
power  which  enabled  the  latter  to  lay  hold  upon  all  the 
youthful  minds  of  his  time — minds  of  the  most  disparate 
orders  and  associated  with  the  utmost  diversities  of  tem- 
perament, and  detain  them  in  a  captivity  which,  brief  as  it 
may  have  been  in  some  cases,  has  in  no  case  failed  to  leave 
its  marks  behind  it.  Over  a  few  spirits  already  prepared 
to  receive  them  Coleridge's  teachings  no  doubt  exerted 
power,  but  he  led  no  soul  captive  against  its  will.  There 
are  few  middle-aged  men  of  active  intelligence  at  the  pres- 
ent day  who  can  avoid  a  confession  of  having  "  taken " 
Carlylism  in  their  youth  ;  but  no  mental  constitutions  not 
predisposed  to  it  could  ever  have  caught  Coleridgism  at 
all.     There  is  indeed  no  moral  theory  of  life,  there  are  no 


XII.]       INFLUENCE  ON  CONTEMrORARY  THOUGHT.         193 

maxims  of  conduct,  such  as  youth  above  all  things  craves 
for,  in  Coleridge's  teaching.  Apart  from  the  intrinsic  dif- 
ficulties of  the  task  to  which  he  invites  his  disciples,  it 
labom's  under  a  primary  and  essential  disadvantage  of  post- 
poning moral  to  intellectual  liberation.  Contrive  somehow 
or  other  to  attain  to  just  ideas  as  to  the  capacities  and  lim- 
itations of  human  consciousness,  considered  especially  in 
relation  to  its  two  important  and  eternally  distinct  func- 
tions, the  Reason  and  the  Understanding,  and  peace  of 
mind  shall  in  due  time  be  added  unto  you.  That  is  in 
effect  Coleridge's  answer  to  the  inquirer  who  consults  him  ; 
and  if  the  distinction  between  the  Reason  and  the  Under- 
standing w'cre  as  obvious  as  it  is  obscure  to  the  average 
unmetaphysical  mind,  and  of  a  value  as  assured  for  the 
purpose  to  which  Coleridge  applies  it  as  it  is  uncertain,  the 
answer  would  nevertheless  send  many  a  would-be  disciple 
sorrowful  away.  Ills  natural  impulse  is  to  urge  the  oracle  to 
tell  him  whether  there  be  not  some  one  moral  attitude  which 
he  can  wisely  and  worthily  adopt  towards  the  universe, 
whatever  theory  he  may  form  of  his  mental  relations  to  it, 
or  without  forming  any  such  theory  at  all.  And  it  was 
because  Carlyle  supplied,  or  was  believed  to  supply  an 
answer,  such  as  it  was,  to  this  universal  question,  that  his 
train  of  followers,  voluntary  and  involuntary,  permanent 
and  temporary,  has  been  so  large. 

It  appears  to  me,  therefore,  on  as  careful  an  examination 
of  the  point  as  the  data  admit  of,  that  Coleridge's  position 
in  these  latter  days  of  his  life  has  been  somewhat  mytli- 
ically  exalted  by  the  generation  which  succeeded  him. 
There  are,  I  think,  distinct  traces  of  a  Coleridgiau  legend 
which  has  only  slowly  died  out.  The  actual  truth  I  believe 
to  be  that  Coleridge's  position  from  1818  or  1820  till  his 
death,  though  one  of  the  greatest  eminence,  was  in  no  sense 


196  COLERIDGE.  [chap. 

one  of  tlie  liiglicst,  oi*  even  of  any  considerable  influence. 
Fame  and  lionour,  in  the  fullest  measure,  were  no  doubt 
his :  in  that  matter,  indeed,  he  was  only  receiving  payment 
of  long-delayed  arrears.  The  poetic  school  with  which  he 
was,  though  not  with  entire  accuracy,  associated,  had  out- 
lived its  period  of  contempt  and  obloquy.  In  spite  of  the 
two  quarterlies,  the  Tory  review  hostile,  its  Whig  rival  coldly 
silent,  the  public  had  recognised  the  high  imaginative  merit 
of  Christahel ;  and  who  knows  but  that  if  the  first  edition 
of  the  Lyrical  Ballads  had  appeared  at  this  date  instead 
of  twenty  years  before,  it  would  have  obtained  a  certain 
number  of  readers  even  among  landsmen  ?  *  But  over  and 
above  the  published  works  of  the  poet  there  were  those 
extraordinary  personal  characteristics  to  which  the  fame  of 
his  works  of  course  attracted  a  far  larger  share  than  for- 
merly of  popular  attention.  A  remarkable  man  has  more 
attractive  power  over  the  mass  of  mankind  than  the  most 
remarkable  of  books,  and  it  was  because  the  report  of 
Coleridge  among  those  who  knew  him  was  more  stimulat- 
ing to  public  curiosity  than  even  the  greatest  of  his  poems, 
that  his  celebrity  in  these  latter  years  attained  such  propor- 
tions. Wordsworth  said  that  though  "  he  had  seen  man}' 
men  do  wonderful  things,  Coleridge  was  the  only  wonderful 
man  he  had  ever  met,"  and  it  was  not  the  doer  of  wonder- 
ful things  but  the  wonderful  man  that  Englisli  society  in 
those  days  went  out  to  see.  Seeing  Avould  have  been 
enough,  but  for  a  certain  number  there  was  hearing  too, 
with  the  report  of  it  for  all ;  and  it  is  not  surprising  that 
fame  of  the  marvellous  discourser  should,  in  mere  virtue  of 

^  Tlic  Longmans  tolJ  C(jloridge  that  the  greater  part  of  the  first 
edition  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads  iiad  been  sold  to  seafaring  men,  wlio, 
having  heard  of  the  Ancient  3farincr,  took  the  volume  for  a  naval 
song-book. 


XII.]  FLVAL  REVIEW.  197 

])is  oxtraordinary  power  of  improvised  speccli,  his  limitless 
and  untiring-  mastery  of  articulate  words,  have  risen  to  a 
heig'lit  to  which  writers  whose  only  voice  is  in  their  pens 
can  never  hope  to  attain. 

A  reputation  of  that  kind,  however,  must  necessarily 
perish  with  its  possessor;  and  Coleridge's  posthumous  re- 
nown has  grown,  his  place  in  English  literature  has  become 
more  assured,  if  it  has  not  been  even  fixed  higher,  since 
his  death  than  during  his  lifetime.  This  is,  in  part  no 
doubt,  one  among  the  consequences  of  those  very  defects 
of  character  which  so  unfortunately  limited  his  actual 
achievements.  lie  has  been  credited  by  faith,  as  it  were, 
with  those  famous  "  unwritten  books  "  of  which  he  assured 
Charles  Lamb  that  the  titles  alone  would  fill  a  volume,  and 
such  "popular  reputation,"  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word, 
as  he  has  left  behind  him,  is  measured  rather  by  what  he 
was  thought  capable  of  doing  than  by  what  he  did.  By 
serious  students,  however,  the  real  worth  of  Coleridge  will 
be  differently  estimated.  For  them  his  peculiar  value  to 
English  literature  is  not  only  undiminished  by  the  incom- 
pleteness of  his  work ;  it  has  been,  in  a  certain  sense,  en- 
hanced thereby.  Or,  perhaps,  it  would  be  more  strictly 
accurate  to  say  that  the  value  could  not  have  existed  with- 
out the  incompleteness.  A  Coleridge  with  the  faculty  of 
concentration,  and  the  habit  of  method  superadded  —  a 
Coleridge  capable  of  becoming  possessed  by  any  one  form 
of  intellectual  energy  to  the  exclusion  of  all  others — might, 
indeed,  have  left  behind  him  a  more  enduring  reputation 
as  a  philosopher,  and  possibly  (although  this,  for  reasons 
already  stated,  is,  in  my  own  opinion,  extremely  doubtful) 
bequeathed  to  his  countrymen  more  poetry  destined  to  live  ; 
but,  unquestionably,  he  would  never  have  been  able  to  ren- 
der that  precise  service  to  modern  thought  and  literature 


198  COLERIDGE.  [otap. 

which,  in  fact,  they  owe  to  him.  To  have  exercised  his 
vivifying  and  fertilising  influence  over  the  minds  of  others 
his  intellect  was  bound  to  be  of  the  dispersive  order ;  it 
was  essential  that  he  should  "  take  all  knowledge  to  be  his 
province,"  and  that  that  eager,  subtle,  and  penetrative  mind 
should  range  as  freely  as  it  did  over  subject  after  subject 
of  human  interest  —  illuminating  each  of  them  in  turn 
with  those  rays  of  true  critical  insight  which,  amid  many 
bewildering  cross-lights  and  some  few  downright  ignes 
fatui,  flash  forth  upon  us  from  all  Coleridge's  work. 

Of  the  personal  weaknesses  which  prevented  the  just 
development  of  the  powers,  enough,  perhaps,  has  been  in- 
cidentally said  in  the  course  of  this  volume.  But,  in  sum- 
ming up  his  history,  I  shall  not,  I  trust,  be  thought  to  judge 
the  man  too  harshly  in  saying  that,  though  the  natural  dis- 
advantages of  wretclied  health,  almost  from  boyhood  up- 
ward, must,  in  common  fairness,  be  admitted  in  partial  ex- 
cuse for  his  failure,  they  do  not  excuse  it  altogether.  It 
is  difficult  not  to  feel  that  Coleridge's  character,  apart  alto- 
gether from  defects  of  physical  constitution,  was  wanting 
in  manliness  of  fibre.  His  willingness  to  accept  assistance 
at  the  hands  of  others  is  too  manifestly  displayed  even  at 
the  earlier  and  more  robust  period  of  his  life.  It  would  be 
a  mistake,  of  course,  in  dealing  with  a  literary  man  of  Cole- 
ridge's era,  to  apply  the  same  standards  as  obtain  in  our 
own  days.  Wordsworth,  as  we  have  seen,  made  no  scruple 
to  accept  the  benevolences  of  the  "Wedgwoods.  Southey, 
the  type  of  independence  and  self-help,  was,  for  some  years, 
in  receipt  of  a  pension  from  a  private  source.  But  Cole- 
ridge, as  Miss  Meteyard's  disclosures  have  shown,  was  at 
all  times  far  more  willing  to  depend  upon  others,  and  was 
far  less  scrupulous  about  soliciting  their  bounty,  than  was 
either  of  his  two  friends.    Had  he  sharcc  more  of  the  spirit 


sii.]  riXAL  REVIEW.  199 

which  made  Johnson  refuse  to  owe  to  the  benevolence  of 
others  what  Providence  had  enabled  him  to  do  for  himself, 
it  might  have  been  better,  no  doubt,  for  the  world  and  for 
the  work  which  he  did  therein. 

But  when  we  consider  what  that  work  was,  how  varied 
and  how  wonderful,  it  seems  idle — nay,  it  seems  ungrate- 
ful and  ungracious — to  speculate  too  curiously  on  what  fur- 
ther or  other  benefits  this  great  intellect  might  have  con- 
ferred upon  mankind,  had  its  possessor  been  endowed  with 
those  qualities  of  resolution  and  independence  which  he 
lacked.  That  Coleridge  so  often  only  shows  the  way,  and 
so  seldom  guides  our  steps  along  it  to  the  end,  is  no  just 
ground  of  complaint.  It  would  be  as  unreasonable  to  com- 
plain of  a  beacon-light  that  it  is  not  a  steam-tug,  and  for- 
get in  the  incompleteness  of  its  separate  services  the  glory 
of  their  number.  It  is  a  more  reasonable  objection  that 
the  light  itself  is  too  often  liable  to  obscuration — that  it 
stands  erected  upon  a  rock  too  often  enshrouded  by  the 
mists  of  its  encircling  sea.  But  even  this  objection  should 
not  too  greatly  weigh  with  us.  It  would  be  wiser  and  bet- 
ter for  us  to  dwell  rather  upon  its  splendour  and  helpful- 
ness in  the  hours  of  its  efficacy,  to  think  how  vast  is  then 
the  expanse  of  waters  which  it  illuminates,  and  its  radiance 
how  steady  and  serene. 


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Theologice  Eoangelicce  ever  produced  by  a  writer  not  miraculously  in- 
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slang  or  false  grammar.  If  you  were  to  polish  it,  you  would  at  once 
destroy  the  reality  of  the  vision ;  for  works  of  imagination  should 
be  written  in  very  plain  language.  This  wonderful  book  is  one  of 
the  few  books  which  may  be  read  repeatedly,  at  different  times,  and 
each  time  with  a  new  and  a  different  pleasure.  I  read  it  once  as  a 
theologian,  and  let  me  assure  you  that  there  is  great  theological  acu- 
men in  the  work ;  once  with  devotional  feelings,  and  once  as  a  poet. 

COLEKIDGE. 

JOHN  BUNYAN. 

BY 

LOED  MACAULAY. 

{Together  with  Macaulay's  Essays  on  "  Oliver  Goldsmith^''  and  ^^ Ma- 
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SAMUEL  JOHNSON. 


BOSWELL'S  JOHNSON. 

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JOHNSON.     By  Lord  Macaulat. 

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JOHNSON'S  RELIGIOUS  LIFE. 

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SAMUEL  JOHNSON.     By  E.  T.  Mason. 

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